By Adedapo Adesanya
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has increased its yearly target by 71 per cent as it expects to generate much as N10.1 trillion as revenue for the 2022 financial year compared to N5.9 trillion set for the 2021 fiscal year.
This was disclosed by the chairman of the country’s tax body, Mr Muhammad Nami, during a public hearing on the 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Finance, earlier in the week in Abuja.
He said that the N10.1 trillion was the global figure projected to be generated and remitted to the federal government in 2022 by the FIRS, the agency responsible for assessing, collecting and accounting for tax and other revenues accruing to the nation’s purse.
According to him, the FIRS had implemented the necessary facilities to ensure it meets its set goal just as it has done in the past years.
Speaking for the lower chamber, the Chairman of the committee, Mr James Faleke, urged the FIRS management to put in the required determination, to ensure that the target was met.
He also commended the previous effort of the FIRS at ensuring that their revenue generation targets were met.
He further urged the Nami-led service to strive to do more in its revenue generation mandate.
The lawmaker had earlier described the MTEF and FSP, with a three-year plan, as a major feature of the annual budget preparation cycle, saying that it provided the basic estimates and assumptions for the annual budget.
The MTEF/FSP consists of Nigeria’s medium-term macro-economic projections, fiscal targets and estimates of revenue and expenditure including the government’s financial obligations.
For the year 2022, it projects revenue of N6.5 trillion for the country and expects the sum of N2.6 trillion to accrue into the Federation account from VAT.
The federal government set a foreign exchange rate of N410.50/$1, a crude oil benchmark price of $57 per barrel of crude oil, a crude oil production of 1.88 million barrels per day, an inflation rate of 10 per cent and a nominal GDP of N149.369 trillion in 2022.
