The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Hajiya Ahmed Zainab, says Nigeria needs a lot of resources to actualise the Economic Growth and Recovery Plan (ERGP) and other development plans.
Hajiya Zaina, who said this on Tuesday in Abuja at the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) Peer Learning Event, was represented by a Director at the Ministry, Dr Israel Igwe.
The minister, who said Nigeria required about $3 trillion over the next 30 years to “sufficiently” address its infrastructure deficit, added that the country needed fiscal sufficiency and buoyancy which must come through domestic revenues for it to be sustainable.
She said the performance showed the country’s inability to “efficiently” collect taxes from its non-oil economic activities.
She said: “Regarding the 2019 Budget, as at 30th June, the actual aggregate revenue as per our Fiscal Accounts was N2.04 trillion, indicating a revenue shortfall of 42 percent, to underperformance of both oil and non-oil revenue targets.
“Similar revenue shortfalls have been experienced since 2017, when the ERGP was launched, resulting in serious deviations from our targeted revenue and expenditure projections….
“We currently have a pervasive revenue generation problem that must change to successfully finance our development plans….
“Speaking to the facts, our current revenue to GDP of 8 percent is sub-optimal and a comparison of oil revenue to oil GDP and non-oil revenue to non-oil GDP performance reveals the significant area that requires immediate and dire intervention as the non-oii sector.”
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