By Goodluck Ikiebe
In its avowed determination to alleviate the pressure of excess money in the system, the Federal Government has said that it will pin down Ways and Means to deal with the problem of too much liquidity in the system
The Honourable Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, disclosed this in Washington DC, United States of America, while answering questions from journalists shortly
after a meeting with investors at the on-going Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank.
He informed the global gathering that the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led Administration was fully determined to
pinning down on Ways and Means to alleviate the pressure of the excess money in the system, adding that in the light of this, the fiscal and monetary authorities were also working towards bringing down inflation.
Mr. Edun added that by so doing, “the two authorities are working hand in hand to bring down inflation and pressure on price stability and stabilising the exchange rate with the target of bringing down interest rates so that investors can borrow at a more affordable rate with a view to getting the economy going the right direction again”.
“We need to borrow less and focus more on domestic resource mobilization. We want long-term resources to avoid repayment and refinancing pressures”*, he noted.
Mr Edun further said that the nation’s tax/GDP was too low, even lower than the African region’s average and that as such, reforms were underway to streamline the number of taxes, deploy technology and implement policies that would double tax revenue in the next three years.
“At 10 percent to GDP, what should I say? It would appear as if some people are not paying their taxes. Our strategy is to increase the tax revenue without increasing the rate of taxes. We want to deploy technology to make tax collection more efficient”.
According to him, “Our analysis has shown that 90 percent of tax revenue comes from nine tax heads while we have over 80 taxes from Federal through States to Local councils”.
“If we eliminate the large number of these taxes and concentrate on the nine that yield the current 90 percent revenue and deploy technology, there will be more efficiency and we will be able to double our tax revenue in about three years”, Edun explained.
He stated further that, “if we eliminate the large number of taxes and bill people properly, we will gain in terms of the peoples’ willingness to pay and you will collect more revenue”, the Minister assured.
While addressing a question on food security, the Minister said that the present administration was dealing with the problem so as to provide farmers’ access to their farms, especially in parts of the country where insecurity has played a major role in reducing food production.
Mr. Wale Edun added that agro clusters were being developed in collaboration with the African Development Bank so as to increase food production in the country.
The Director Information and Public Relations, Mr Mohammed Manga, says in a statement that alongside the Minister at the meeting were the former Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed; Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance, Mrs Lydia Shehu Jafiya; Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Mr Olayemi Cardoso and some other top government officials.
