President Muhammadu Buhari on friday declared that efforts to guarantee that every taxable Nigerian declares their income and pays the correct taxes to the relevant authorities are being intensified.
Buhari made this clear when he delivered the N20.52 trillion 2023 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly’s joint session in Abuja.
The president stated that going forward, income generating agencies will also receive special attention, seeing revenue shortage as the biggest threat to Nigeria’s fiscal stability.
“Revenue shortfalls remain the greatest threat to Nigeria’s fiscal viability. We have therefore accelerated efforts towards ensuring that all taxable Nigerians declare income from all sources and pay taxes due to the appropriate authorities.
“We are also monitoring the internally generated revenues of agencies of government to ensure they are appropriately accounted for and remitted to the Consolidated Revenue Fund,’’ he said.
According to Buhari, the performance of non-oil revenue shows that the reforms in tax collection and expenditure management are producing favorable consequences.
He claims that even while we keep implementing improvements to the tax administration and increasing the effectiveness of our collection efforts, we urgently need to identify new sources of income.
“As we seek to grow our government revenues, we must also focus on the efficiency of utilisation of our limited resources.
“Critical steps we are taking include immediate implementation of additional measures towards reducing the cost of governance and the discontinuation of fuel subsidy in 2023 as announced earlier.
“We are however mindful of the fact that reducing government spending too drastically can be socially destabilising, and so will continue to implement programmes to support the more vulnerable segments of society,’’ he said.
The medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF) and fiscal strategy paper (FSP), the foundations upon which the 2023 budget will be built, were adopted by the National assembly, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
In addition to laying a strong foundation for the new administration, Buhari claimed that the 2023 transition budget was created to address pressing challenges. (NAN)
