(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria expects to meet its revenue target this year after addressing inefficiencies in its tax collection system.
“We set a target of 19.4 trillion naira ($12 billion) for ourselves” this year, Zacch Adedeji, chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, said. “We are almost in the third quarter of the year and with the figures we are seeing so far, I can say we are on the path of achieving our target,” Adedeji, who is also an adviser to President Bola Tinubu on revenue, said.
Tinubu has made fixing Nigeria’s tax system a key priority as part of efforts to revamp the beleaguered economy and reduce its fiscal deficit. Africa’s largest crude producer has in the past couple of years frequently missed its annual revenue targets mainly due to oil earnings falling below forecasts because of low production.
Improved oil output this year and a focus on tax compliance are helping to reverse that trend.
To further bolster tax efficiency the agency plans to overhaul obsolete tax laws such as the Stamp Duty Act, which was “made in 1939 when there was no internet connectivity or any of the features of modern society as we have it now,” Adedeji said.
The revenue agency is also planning to bring cryptocurrency into its regulatory oversight to further boost revenues. “We cannot run away from the cryptocurrency ecosystem because it is the in-thing” Adedeji said. “We need a law that regulates that area of our economy,” he said.
The West African nation, which is facing its worst cost of living crisis in decades aims to spend 35 trillion naira in 2024.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
