Lagos To Boost Revenue By 40% With Harmonisation

As part of efforts to make the payment of tax and levies easy for businesses in Lagos State whilst boosting revenue by about 40 per cent, the state is set to harmonise the payment of levies and taxes allowing for payment on one platform.

Special Adviser to Lagos governor on Taxation and Revenue, Opeyemi Ogungbo, revealing the harmonisation plan, explained that the harmonised structure means that businesses will be able to pay bills at once to one agency, bringing ease to payments rather than paying multiple agencies

Noting that the government is focused on driving efficiency, compliance, and growth in the state’s revenue sector, he said, with the harmonisation and other initiatives, “we expect to grow our revenue by not less than 30 to 40 per cent. We are working within the harmonisation structure we are talking about to see how we can bring everybody on board and put a transparent system in place.”

He noted that the state is vigorously pursuing integration and process harmonisation across MDAs with cognate activities i.e Tourism subsector, transport, property environment and widen the payment channels to promote ease of doing business in the state.”

Noting that harmonisation of Industry-based revenue will be launched after that revenue portal by the second month of the fourth quarter of this year, Ogungbo said, “you can see all your bills, all your payments, all your remittances real time when you log on to the self service application that government is about to launch. It is a centralised billing and payments portal.

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“For the industry-specific harmonisation like the hospitality industry, informal sector and the likes, that will be launched on the second month of the fourth quarter depending on our various approvals and engagements because there are some complexities that we have to manage.”

Meanwhile, he said, the Lagos state government will be able to surpass its revenue target for the year saying “the government has N2.246 trillion as budget for the year. Out of which we have about N1.251 trillion as IGR. The remaining is expected to be funded through federal transfers, capital receipts and maybe loans. We are moving very fast.

“We have moved past the target of last year. We are now going back to the House of Assembly for budget reordering to reappropriate for certain needs that have happened that we did not factor in at the beginning of the year or last year when we were putting the budget in place. But I can say that we are doing very pretty well. We have exceeded the target for same time same period last year with over 50 to 60 per cent