Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, budget, and national
planning, says the federal government has recovered N53.5 billion out of N5.2
trillion owed by its ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs).
Ahmed disclosed this on Monday at the formal launch of
Project Lighthouse Debt Analytics and Reporting Platform in Abuja.
She said the project entails using advanced data mining and
analytics techniques to identify tax defaulters, establish their tax liabilities
and send notifications to appropriate authorities for necessary actions.
The minister added that the ministry was leveraging a
multi-layer data mining effort to recover huge debts owed to the federal
government by various MDAs.
Through the efforts of the project, she said, the government
had been able to aggregate huge debts of approximately N5.2 trillion owed by
MDAs, out of which N53.5 billion had been recovered in the last 12 to18 months.
According to Ahmed, the figures came up from data aggregated
from over 5,000 debtors across 10 MDAs.
“Working in collaboration with the Office of the Accountant
General of the Federation (OAGF), we have been able to recover the sum of N53.5
billion within the last 12-18 months, through the Government Integrated
Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) as a recovery touch-point,”
she said.
“To consolidate on the current effort of this project, a
Debt Recovery Application has been built to be monitored by the new Debt Recovery
Unit.
“The debt recovery unit will capitalise on the effort made
by the project consultants to provide the government with up-to-date records of
its credit status.
“By harmonising debt records across all MDAs within the
country, give debtors access to a platform to view and offset debt in a
seamless and secured manner as well as strengthen the institutional framework
for enforcement and management of the Federal Debt Recovery plan.”
The minister further urged all federal government-owned
enterprises (FGOEs) and MDAs to update their list of debtors on a
month-on-month basis in line with the project’s debt recovery portfolio.
This would also encompass the development of an
institutional framework for enforcement, recovery, and management of the fiscal
environment, Ahmed said.
She noted that one of the key economic policy objectives of
the current administration, as contained in the Economic Recovery and Growth
Plan (ERGP), was improving overall government revenues by targeting and increasing
revenues from non-oil sources.
“ERGP also aims, among other goals, to increase the tax base
by drastically increasing the company income tax (CIT) and value-added tax
(VAT) compliance, bringing additional taxpayers into the tax net, and
increasing tax to GDP ratio,” she said.
The minister, however, regretted that despite being in
technology and data-centric world, Nigeria had no culture of using data and
information to guide the formulation, implementation, and impact assessment of
its initiatives and policies.
“This modus operandi presents a number of challenges,
firstly, our policies are not usually empirically based. Second, we are not
able to effectively track the implementation and impact of these policies,
initiatives, programmes, and mandates. Third, we lack data to help guide the
revision or optimization of these policies,” he said.
“In response to the aforementioned challenges, the Federal
Ministry of Finance initiated Project Lighthouse. In July 2017, during the
first phase of Project Lighthouse, data was mined from multiple sources to
support the implementation of the voluntary assets and income declaration
scheme (VAIDS).
“All these data helped us to identify and better profile
individuals and corporate taxpayers, it also helped to identify tax defaulters
and potential beneficiaries of VAIDS.
Last year, the federal government recovered the N49.7
billion debt owed to it by contractors through the project.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com