Nigeria targets 80% of revenues from non-oil sector – FIRS

The Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr. Tunde Fowler, has said that Nigeria would earn, at least, 80 per cent of her revenues from the non-oil sector of the economy in the next three years.

A statement by Mr. Wahab Gbadamosi, the Head, Communications and Servicom Department, FIRS said Fowler made the commitment at the Nigeria-Canada Investment Summit in Abuja.

He noted that the non-oil sector contribution to the Nigerian economy had risen to 60 per cent by November 2019 from 54 per cent in December 2018.

He also noted that the continuous drop in the oil prices was a sign that attention should be focused on the non-oil sector of the economy that is more sustainable.

“We are moving from oil dependent to non-oil dependent economy. We believe that in the next three years, the non-oil sector is going to contribute at least 80 per cent of the total revenue. You may ask where is that going to come from. It is going to come from Agriculture,” he said.

He said the strategies that FIRS was adopting to realise an improved revenue collection were: “auto VAT Collection: there is automation of VAT collection in key sectors which facilitates reduction in compliance cost in the long term; there is system to system integration between banks and FIRS; VAT collection in the banking sector went live in January 2017 and from Jan-Oct 2019 collected N25.6bn so far; VAT collection in the Cable TV sector went live in Dec 2018 and generated N5.1bn so far from Jan-Oct 18 2019″ he said.

According to him “Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS) project is a suite of programs that enables the automation of FIRS tax processes. As part of the Service’s objectives to bring high-level efficiency to tax revenue collection and provide first class services to taxpayers, ITAS project introduced SIGTAS, a solution that covers all aspects of tax administration in one integrated system.”