Wale Jagun
The Senator representing the Lagos East Senatorial District, Distinguished Senator Mikhail Adetokunbo Abiru, FCA, has tasked major revenue earning agencies of government on improving capacity for revenue generation.
He gave the charge during the debate on the 2022 -2024 Medium Term Expenditure and Fiscal Strategy Paper on the floor of the Senate.
The former Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer and former Lagos State Commissioner for Finance, argued that one of the sustainable ways of reducing the huge budget deficit of the nation is for the agencies to improve there capacity in revenue drive and block wastages.
The position of the Senator was contained in a release by his Special Adviser, (Media and Publicity), Mr Enitan Olukotun, on Thursday.
“How do we moderate the deficit? Some of the things that came out during the committee stage is the fact that we still needed to push most of the agencies of government to maximize there capacity for revenue generation”, Abiru said.
“One of the major revenue earners for this country is Oil. As the world is getting relaxed based on the discovery of vaccine for COVID-19, there will be an uptick in demand. Even the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is increasing world output in terms of quota. But what do we find? Our own oil agency here is still falling short. They have a 2.5mbd capacity.
“We are still losing above 100,000 bd of crude oil per day. If you extrapolate that in a year, that is in excess of 40mb. That is in excess of N1tr. Those are revenues that can moderate out deficit and improve our capacity to repay debt”.
The Senator later engaged journalists at the Senate Press Centre where he elaborated on the panacea for the huge deficit.
He said that when nations are confronted with recession, they spend their way out the conundrum.
Flanked by the Senator representing Lagos West Senatorial District, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, the Lagos East Senator said:
“You spend yourself out of recession to keep the economy moving. But as you do that, yet, people are concerned that the revenue of the country is not rising to meet the expectations of the spending”, he said.
“That is why you have the huge deficit. Part of what came to the fore during the Committee stage is that we came across MDAs whose revenue and targets or budget are not in line with the capacity that you expect.
“I think it was the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC . You needed to see the trend of the budget and the budget they are projecting into 2022. Even at that committee stage, we had to extend the revenue target from N21b to about N30bn. We gave them the reason. It was based on the capacity of what they were doing from prior years.
“That tells you that if you screen all the agencies well, all these deficits that people are clamouring about can be materially reduced if only we can get revenues that will reduce the deficit”.
The Senate passed the 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure and Fiscal Strategy Paper.
