Posted by From JOE EFFIONG, Uyo on
If you have any intention of evading tax, please do not go to Akwa Ibom as there may be no hiding place.
If you have any intention of evading tax, please do not go to Akwa Ibom as there may be no hiding place.
With the recent appointment of revenue consultants, Messrs ICMA Services, and the introduction of Revenue Enhancement and Monitoring System (REEMS) which is expected to rake in about N1 billion a month through internally generated sources, then tax, hitherto treated with levity, has become a serious affair.
The state currently makes about N670 million monthly but its finance commissioner, Mr Bassey Albert Akpan says "this is grossly inadequate for an administration that has the reputation of promptly meeting its capital expenditure and revenue overheads obligations."
While introducing the consultants to the press recently, Akpan also disclosed that the recently introduced REEMS would equally be employed for online and real-time monitoring of all internally generated revenue to evolve simplified revenue generating machinery and accounting procedures.
The commissioner said that the many capital-intensive development projects embarked upon and the uncompleted ones from Attah's administration have been resuscitated for the benefits of the people which has resulted in the unprecedented ongoing numerous project inauguration exercises for the whole of the second quarter of the year.
Since he maintained Akpabio administration has not taken any loan so far in the execution of the many development projects, it thus becomes imperative to source for other ways of augmenting the r
eceipts from the federation account.
"In order to facilitate that augmentation without perpetual recourse to borrowing, the state government aims to achieve the sum of N1 billion as minimum acceptable level of monthly internally generated revenue before the end of this year."
But won't the ambitious amount led to over taxation of the people in a state regarded as civil service state? Akpan disagrees.
To him, Akwa Ibom is no longer a civil service economy with all the infrastructural developments put in by Akpabio's administration. Again, he said Akwa Ibom people are the least taxed residents in the whole nation.
With N1 billion coming in from within and about N10 billion coming monthly, then such mega projects like the international airport, the 5-star hotel, science park, the state university, the Ibom Power Company all started by Attah's administration but inherited by Akpabio, plus the numerous new projects initiated by this regime, need not federal. The completion is guaranteed.