Chijioke Okoronka, the Executive Chairman, Board of Internal Revenue, Abia State has affirmed that there is encouraging growth in Abia state revenue data base.
The BIR boss while responding to pressmen who visited the BIR office in Umuahia on Wednesday on enquiry revealed that growth in internally generated revenue(IGR) collection in the state is attributed to “the injection of the private sector driven approach” which involves the application of technology in revenue collection in the state.
While acknowledging the contributions of the civil servants in the Board of Internal Revenue (BIR) in the state, Chijioke described them as “technical people that know what to do” but got a boost with the assistance of the private sector driven approach in revenue collection in the state.
The Abia BIR Chairman in his own words said: “there were innovations and changes in modern system of doing things that propelled the achievement that we made”.
Speaking of the achievements made so far with the drive of the private sector which involves the application of technology with the use of mobile Application pay system and creation of a data base which capture records of plate numbers of commercial tricycles and vehicles.
“We moved from manual ticketing to E-ticketing, in fact Abia state was the first state to implement it and it was so good and it expanded from Keke (tricycle) to every part of the transport sector and to the markets”. Chijioke said.
“The entire revenue is driven by E-ticketing platform which is a wonderful innovation. We saw the state moving our revenue from less than a hundred million to over two hundred million, it was a very radical increase”. Chijioke revealed.
Chijioke also added that the new revenue innovation has reduced faking, and lots of challenges encountered in paper ticketing while assuming that E-ticketing cannot be duplicated because of the security features applied.
The BIR boss also revealed that in 2021, the board generated 19.20 billion naira, in 2022, 19.80 billion naira was generated and 6 billion naira has so far been generated for the first quarter of 2023 while 24 billion naira is been projected for 2023 and 30 billion for 2024 and 40 billion naira is expected for 2025.
In contrast, the revenue record in 2018 was 15.83 billion naira and in 2019, the revenue data was 15.49 billion naira , while in 2020 it was 15. 92 billion naira.
With the use of technology in boosting IGR collection in the state, the Abia BIR boss said the target is to “achieve 3 billion naira per month on the average and it is achievable”.
He also added that there’s a dire need for other MDA’s to queue into the database of revenue collection in Abia State.
He also added that there’s a high level of compliance in revenue collection compared to the past due to the clamp down of illegal revenue collection which has been reduced to about eighty percent through the use of technology.
He also added that the BIR has a law that prohibits people to pay cash to anyone, thus, a technical system put in place makes it easy for tax payers to get alert as they pay. He also added that the board has introduced, gradual payment of taxes which involves splitting the entire tax amount into fragments that can be paid in installments. He captioned the system as “Pay Small Small”.
Chijioke also revealed that the mode of tax collection in the state is by POS, AfriPay which brings payment of tax closer to tax payers.
“We are moving gradually to make payments seem less for tax payers, technology has really helped us and done so well”. Chijioke said.
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