By Adedapo Adesanya
The Kaduna State Revenue Service (KADIRS) has promised to grow the state’s Internally Generated Revenue to N100 billion in the next two years.
The Executive Chairman of the service, Mr Zaid Abubakar, also said by the end of this year, the state is expected to have increased its IGR by over 80 per cent of its annual budget.
Speaking at an awards ceremony to recognise taxpayers who have been consistent in paying their taxes, the state’s chief tax collector said to achieve this goal, KADIRS has come up with medium and long-term collection plans.
Mr Abubakar explained that the awards event was put together to also recognise other government agencies whose contributions helped the service to exceed its revenue target of N50 billion last year.
”For the medium-term revenue collection plan, we expect that by 2024 Kaduna will be able to collect more than N100 billion and by 2030 we should be able to collect more than N200 billion.
”With that, we can, to a certain extent say, whether FAAC holds or not, at least 70-80 per cent of our budgetary requirements will be met through IGR,” Mr Abubakar said.
The Executive Chairman also said that the essence of such events is, “to engender inter-agency collaboration and also to motivate our teeming taxpayers to continue to pay their taxes to the state government.”
Mr Abubakar noted that despite the pandemic and significant changes and scaling down the budget by N50 billion, the state did not only meet its budget but exceeded it.
”Under the transformative leadership of Governor Nasir El-Rufai, the state’s tax collection has grown from N12 billion in 2015 to N44.9 billion in 2019 and over N50 billion in 2020, thus becoming one of the states with the highest IGR across the federation,” he said.
Mr Abubakar attributed this success to the political support that KADIRS enjoys from the governor and the State Executive Council, the unwavering commitment of the staff of the agency, taxpayers’ compliance and support, as well as the invaluable collaborative efforts of revenue collecting Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).
Modupe Gbadeyanka