The Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of Abia State and Chairman, Abia Economic Advancement Team, ABEAT, Sir Mac Atasie has advised all states of the federation to adopt tech-driven revenue collection method to plug leakages and save money for projects that will benefit the people.

Atasie said his state generated over N800m last year from tricycle operators alone because of the automated system of revenue collection which he helped establish in the state.

Atasie, a well known personality in the Nigerian technology sector said automation helps states recoup revenues that would have ordinarily ended up in private pockets.

At a meeting with selected journalists in Umuahia recently, Atasie disclosed that the automated revenue collection system in Abia state now gives an up-to-date data of all the revenues generated and automatically transferred same into the Abia State Government account.

He explained that the system documents the number of flying revenues including heavy duty trucks, mini buses, tricycles among others, thereby plugging the leakages in the state as well as increasing the monthly internally- generated revenue.

The system, according to him, has also reduced the presence of touts in revenue collection in the state.

He prides himself as being instrumental to the introduction of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, USSD code for monitoring the cash movement between the state and the Board of internal revenue for the first time in the state’s 30 years history.

Listing the benefits the system has brought to the state, Atasie said the transport sector which used to generate less than N100 million a year, before he took over 18 months ago, generated about N1.167 billion last year alone.

He also revealed that the innovation resulted in the generation of over N800million last year from tricycle operators’ daily tax in the state.