Tax Professionals Task Govt on  Policies to Drive Growth

Omolabake Fasogbon

The Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) has expressed the optimism of a prosperous economy amid biting economic realities and the environment.

At the Institute’s 31st Annual General Meeting (AGM), its President, Adesina Adedayo, maintained that the past few years had been challenging for the Nigerian economy, adding therefore that the right policies are needed to reverse unfavourable trends.

Adedayo expressed that the country had been struggling with growth ever since it exited the recession in 2020 and recovered from the COVID-19 setback.

Quoting the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), he said the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 3.10 per cent in 2022, lower than the 3.40 per cent recorded in 2021.

He further decried the lingering revenue underperformance which he blamed on public sector inefficiencies, structural bottlenecks, poor informal sector integration, industrial-scale oil theft and tough business operating environment.

According to him, “The sustained revenue under performance and ballooning expenditure profile of the federal government resulted in an aggressive debt build-up with critical implications for liquidity management (revenue-to-GDP 3.3 percent) and debt sustainability (total debt-to-GDP 35.2 percent). This necessitated the downgrade of the country’s credit rating deeper into the junk category (B-) by Fitch Ratings.”

Worse still, Adedayo worried that Nigeria’s unemployment figure at 33.3 per cent has graduated to be the second highest globally, noting that the right policies were urgent and non-negotiable.

He said: “We remain hopeful that with the right policies in place and implemented, the economy will witness improvement across all economic indices before the end of the year 2023”.

The Institute boss added that in spite of glaring challenges, CITN had remained resilient and focused on its mission statement, while its views on tax matters remained sought-after by the government and other stakeholders in the Nigerian tax system.