Economy

FIRS Sets N5.9 Trillion Revenue Target This Year

Published

3 years ago

March 5, 2021

Gbolabo Fagbenle

The Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, has set a revenue collection projection for 2021 at N5.9 trillion.

This represents an increase of about 16.22 per cent above the 2020 budget
of N5.076tr in 2020 .

The Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, Mohammed Nami, made this known in Abuja during the 2021 budget defence meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Finance led by Hon. James Falake.

The chairman said that the service was planning to generate N4.26 trillion from non-oil investments and N1.64 trillion from oil investments.

He however put the cost of collecting the projected revenue at N289.25 billion against the budgeted N180.76 billion in 2020 to fund the three operational expenditure heads for the year.

He said: “Out of the proposed expenditure of N289.25 billion across the three expenditure heads, the sum of N147.08 billion and N94.97 billion are to be expended on Personnel and Overhead Costs against 2020 budgeted sum of N97.36 billion and N43.64 billion respectively.

“Also, the sum of N47.19 billion is estimated to be expended on capital items against the budgeted sum of N27.80 billion in 2020. The sum is to cater for on-going and new projects for effective revenue drive.”

Speaking on why the agency failed to achieve N5 trillion it targeted in 2020, Nami said that the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the #EndSARS protest affected the drive for taxes.

Responding to a query by the Committee on why there was an increase in the recurrent expenditures of the Service for 2021, Nami attributed this to the new salary structure due to recruitment of more staff.

He said there were about 1,800 staff recruited by the former management between 2019 and 2020, adding that the Service also carried over about 500 members of staff.