Borno State government said it is targeting N25 billion Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, in 2025 as against the N19 billion for this year.
The Chairman, Borno State Internal Revenue Service, Professor Bello Ibrahim, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, yesterday in Maiduguri.
Ibrahim announced that the agency had already generated more than N18 billion as at September, adding that by the end of November, the agency would have surpassed its 2024 projection of N19 billion.
“We are looking at generating N25 billion in 2025. We will intensify efforts to leverage on the little peace we are gaining in the state and expand the scope of our collections.”
The chairman said the increase in the projected IGR is instrumental to an innovative tax drive via automated process which had dramatically changed revenue collection in the state.
According to him, the state revenue service has been consistently raising IGR more than many states in the North-East with the introduction of automated processes in revenue collection.
“If you do comparative analysis, three years; 2021 this agency was able to generate only N10 billion, in 2022 we managed to generate a little over N17 billion.
“In 2023, we generated N19.4 or N19.6 billion, that is almost N20 billion and if you consider Borno and other states that did not experience this insurgency, you will appreciate the fact that we are not doing badly.
“By next week, a strong delegation will visit Southern Borno to carry out automated processes in Hawul, Biu, Kwaya-Kusar, Bayo and Shani Local Government Areas; the five local governments will come onboard very soon.
“We believe our IGR will increase tremendously by God’s grace in 2025,” he said.
Ibrahim said ahead of the 2025 revenue target, the service had a week ago, signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with a service consultant.
He said the MoU was on Service Level Agreement on the collection of revenue from grains and cattle markets through the same automated system.
“We instructed our technical partners to integrate them (consultant) and open an account for them, give them revenue heads and identify the revenue heads that they will collect.
“So this is how we intend to cover the gap that has been identified in our revenue collection in order to meet our projected IGR in 2025,” the chairman said. (NAN)
