The Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria has said there is need for the new government that will emerge after the upcoming elections to address revenue crisis in the country.
The institute gave the advice when some financial experts spoke during a virtual seminar organised by the CITN with the theme ‘Federal Government of Nigeria budget 2023 and the change in guards: What next’.
The seminar was attended by chieftains in the financial sector.
The Executive Director (Nigeria|STP), AfDB, Dr. Oyebode Oyetunde, delivered a presentation titled ‘FGN’s 2023 budget: Thoughts on budgeting, taxing and transitioning’, he gave suggestions on how to solve the revenue challenge’.
He advocated for, “Increased VAT revenues predominantly to support our states and Local Governments’ precious finances during and after the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the economy;
“Reducing headline corporate tax rates for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises; Reforming archaic tax legislation in line with global best practices to combat base erosion and transfer pricing;
“Reforming the taxation of securities lending & real estate investment trusts to spur increased capital market investments; and Empowering the Federal Inland Revenue Service & the Nigeria Customs Service to optimise their use of technology to more efficiently collect taxes and levies.”
The Director of Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Muda Yusuf, said as the country transits to the new administration from the business and policy point of view, “Our expectation is that we need to move very quickly on our oil and gas sector reform because the economy has been bleeding through the sector for several decades.
“We need accelerated reforms in the downstream oil sector so that we can have more investment in the sector, we can address the issue of subsidy and all the associated corruption, issues of oil theft, inefficiency, loss of revenue.
“All of these things are needed to scale up investment in the sector. We are not seeing the desired level of investment that we should see in the oil and gas sector.”
He worried that the country was still heavily dependent on importation of petroleum product which has a lot of effect on both the revenue and the foreign exchange earnings.
According to him, “We are all witnesses to the amounts we have lost to oil theft.
“All of these things are what we should put on the next agenda of the very urgent things that need to be done to stabilise the economy.”
He said the country also needs urgent reforms in the foreign exchange development.
Yusuf said, “One of the biggest problems that we face in the private sector since the inception of this administration is the quality of the foreign exchange policy.
“We need to put an end to the arbitrage, we need to stop the corruption, we need to unlock inflows because the current policy is blocking inflow of foreign inflow into the economy and if the inflow is not growing, the revenue cannot grow.”
