By Favour Nnabugwu
A good number of companies in the country are owing the Federal Government a whopping N170 billion on taxes. Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala disclosed this in Abuja. Dr Iweala said the federal government would ensure that the tax system work in Nigeria in her paper on Nigeria: Implementing an Investor Friendly Transformation Agenda.

Okonjo-Iweala

Of the N170 billion, the Minister said that government had reached a repayment agreement of N22 billion whilst N148billion was still pending. She said “We need to diversify our revenue sources. In Nigeria, we only get 2.2 per cent revenue from non-oil sources, but other oil producing countries have been able to do more in terms of diversifying their tax base and one of the things we need to really focus on is the way our tax system works”.

Okonjo-Iweala said that as part of the reforms to make Nigeria more investor friendly, the Federal Government would also focus on ports and customs reforms and has to this end, pruned from 14 to 7 the number of agencies that carry out inspection at the ports.

“Why are all those agencies at the port? They have to leave, we have reduced them from 14 to 7 and has also requested for a 24hours shift duty to enable them clear goods at the port faster. Our objective is that it should take no more than 48 hours for people to clear their goods from the ports. We know it may be difficult, but we can achieve it.

“We have also disbanded the customs task force that harasses private sector people at the ports, we are abolishing some of those papers that people have to fill out to clear their goods, developing container clearance strategy and investing in infrastructure at the ports. We will set up private sector group to monitor that these policies are being complied with at the ports” she said.

On the issue of subsidy, Okonjo-Iweala stated that some would have to go whilst others would be reformed to for better performance. She said that the subsidy in the downstream of the petroleum sector would have to go just as that of agricultural sector was being reformed.

“There is no problem with subsidies, but we have to do away with inefficient subsidies and reform the ones that are not working well. If poor people are not benefiting from subsidies then it is useless. Before now, only 11 per cent of poor people were getting fertilizer at subsidised rate, but with the pilot project we have introduced in partnership with the private sector where the farmers are given vouchers, about 94 per cent of poor farmers now get fertilizer at subsidised rate” she said.

Okonjo-Iweala admitted that there was no way reforms could be the same among countries because of perculiarities of countries. “There are peculiarities to the Nigerian environment and that is what we are doing. We are looking at our peculiar situation and trying to proffer solutions that will work for us” she said.