Step up Revenue Mobilisation, FIRS Tells W’Africa’s Tax Authorities

By Ndubuisi Francis

The Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Muhammad Nami, has urged tax authorities across West Africa to step up their efforts towards generating higher tax revenues for their respective countries in order to accelerate development in the sub-region.

Nami gave the charge on Thursday in Abuja at the opening ceremony of a regional seminar on the problems of tax transition in West Africa, organised by the steering committee on support Programme for Tax Transition in West Africa (PATF).

He stated that governments across West Africa needed enhanced tax revenues to tackle many development-related challenges they confront, especially in the areas of health and security difficulties. Welcoming delegates and other participants to the event, which was the first major stakeholders’ meeting of the PATF that is focused on domestic revenue mobilisation in the sub-region, Nami congratulated member-countries for their relentless efforts since January 2020, the date of the effective commencement of the PATF.

He noted: “Since the establishment and effective holding of the first Steering Committee, the execution of the missions in progress has accelerated, making it possible

to have results that can be shared by the actors of the programme and the beneficiaries.

“Since then, we have come a long way, with results that are certainly mixed, but encouraging and which should encourage us to continue our work.”

He listed areas where the PATF needed to work on to achieve its set objectives.

These include “the establishment of the PATF Steering Committee; improving the management of tax expenditures in the region; providing a practical guide for Value Added Tax (VAT) management for West Africa; the creation of a regional methodology guide for the evaluation of tax expenditures; and the establishment of an information system specific to the UEMOA and ECOWAS Commissions”.

To achieve these goals, Nami posited that “our countries must have national databases and a regional platform”. He observed that: “This indispensable steering body of our consultation system still lacks vitality, as it does not have institutional and financial guarantees.”

He, therefore, tasked participants “to complete your work as soon as possible,

but above all to propose innovative, realistic and feasible recommendations,” adding that: “Our various governments are facing health and security difficulties; in this context, they greatly need these results”.