The Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, says the automation of collection and management of non-oil revenue is critical to increasing revenue generation and sustenance in the country.
Idris stated this on Tuesday in a paper entitled, “Automation of Payment System for Efficiency in the Non-oil Sector”, presented at the ongoing 3-day conference of the National Council on Finance and Economic Development holding in Kaduna.
He said that the automation as opposed to manual processing, collection, management and reporting of government non-oil revenue would also block leakages.
He explained that the non-oil revenue, commonly referred to as Internally Generated Revenue include tax, operating surplus, tender fees, proceeds from sales of government assets and stores and licences.
He said: “Others are mining rents, rent on government properties, investment income, interest earned and all other revenue that accrue exclusively to the Federal or state governments.
“For example, the projected total Federal Government revenue for 2017, 2018 and 2019 stand at N6.6 billion; N6.3 billion and N6.8 billion respectively.
“The non-oil revenue accounts for 37 per cent, 51 per cent and 56 per cent respectively.
“This underscore the rising significance of the non-oil revenue in Nigerians fiscal profile.”
Idris stressed that the much-needed efficiency required in harnessing the vast potentials in non oil revenues can only be achieved through full automation.
According to him, government must as a matter of priority, focus more attention to this critical element to boosting its revenue base away from oil by committing more resources for its actualization.
“The automation of non-oil revenue such as tax and customs duties for example provides payers with an avenue for self-service and promotes voluntary compliance and offers convenience through easy to use e-payments platforms.
“It also brings about efficiency and reduction in cost and the readily available data from automated systems assist in planning and decision making.”
The AG said that the Federal Government Integrated Financial Management Information System has aided the collection, accounting, reporting and management of government revenue.
He also said that the combined implementation of the Treasury Single Account and automation of Federal Government collection processes have brought immense, tangible, measurable and verifiable benefits.
Idris said: “Among the benefits is huge savings on interest charges. For example, as at the last count, TSA saves government over N42 billion monthly on ways and means charges.
“However, while the capacity of our people to use ICT has improved rapidly over the years, the availability of local capacity for support and maintenance has not seen much improvement.
“This creates problems for sustainability and funding at a time when government is passing through funding constrain.”
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the 2018 NACOFED conference, according to Minister of Finance, Hajiya Zainab Ahmed, was organised to find ways of improving revenue generation in the country.
Automation of non-oil revenue critical to improved revenue generation – Accountant General
