NAN-HE-11
Revenue
By Thompson Yamput
Jos, July 25, 2017 (NAN) The Plateau Government on Tuesday said it generated N5.19 billion Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) between January and June 2017.
Mr Dashe Arlat, the Chairman of Plateau State Internal Revenue Service (PSIRS), disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Jos.
The PSIRS chairman said that with this achievement, there was the tendency that the service might meet the N13 billion target for the year.
“If you look at the analysis of our collections, you will see that we were able to hit N1.2 billion in the month of June followed by N877, 88 million recorded in the month of January.
“Our desire as a service is to maintain the N1 billion mark in our monthly collection which I believe will be a great boost for the state government to meet its obligations to the people of Plateau, ’’ he said.
Arlato described the feat as “very huge and encouraging” and commended members of staff of the service for their resilience and hard work.
He also attributed the feat to the introduction of various reforms which included the `Smart Collection,’ a technology that fast-tracks issuance of Tax Identification Numbers (TIN) to tax payers, and the quicker mode of payment.
Arlat said that the new technology was helping to check wastage and encouraging the MDAs to improve on their revenue collections.
The chairman said that the service was waiting for the governor to sign the Harmonisation Bill recently passed by the state House of Assembly to improve its revenue collection.
“As I earlier said, the 500 ad-hoc staff we recently engaged were small for us to achieve our goals, but we hope government will give us the go-ahead to employ more hands.
“By the time we employ more workers and we can send them out into the streets to capture tax payers, especially those within the informal sector, our story will tremendously change,’’ he said.
He called on the general public to cooperate with staff of the service who will soon be going round to enumerate houses within the Bukuru-Jos Metropolis for the collection of ground rent.
Arlat said numbering all the houses in the state for revenue collection would be in the overall interest of the state. (NAN)
TYC/JPE/TA
Edited by Joseph/Tajudeen Atitebi