AKWA IBOM STATE TARGETS 80BN IGR IN 2025
Ima Nkanta
The Executive Chairman of Akwa Ibom Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Okon Okon has expressed confidence in God’s ability to help the state surpass the 80billion internally generated revenue (IGR) for 2025, even as he commends the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Pastor Umo Eno for creating enabling environment for businesses to thrive in the State.
Just a week ago, the Governor was at the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly for presentation of 2025 budget, christened, “Budget of Consolidation and Expansion, laying out a total of 955,000 billion naira budgetary estimates for the 2025 financial year, out of which Akwa Ibom Internal Revenue Service (AKIRS) is required to contribute 80billion to the projected revenue of Recurrent Revenue of 830,000 billion for 2025.
As herculean a task as it seems, given the difficult economic climate of the country occasioned by the removal of fuel subsidy by President Tinubu administration, the revenue boss is confident that the organization will meet the target, as he expressed faith in God’s ultimate help towards achieving the target.
Meanwhile, the Akwa Ibom State Internal Revenue Service (AKIRS) has recorded impressive performance in IGR for the state, especially with the implementation of its digitalization of its programmes, which is expected to further improve revenues for the State.
In a press briefing recently in Uyo, the revenue boss, Mr. Okon Okon told the newsmen that the organization was fully prepared to upscale its revenue benchmark through technology, without unnecessarily overtasking citizens with increased tax rate. He said: “We are confident that without increasing any tax rate, the IGR of our State would be improved via the application of technology, increased tax awareness campaign, and the expansion of the tax net to capture tax evaders.”
According to him, the state’s IGR has already shown signs of good improvement, with records indicating that IGR moved from N34.75 billion in 2022 to N43.18 billion in 2023 during the Umo Eno’s administration.
Gearing towards greater improvement in 2025, he hinted on full digitalization of their processes for data collection, an initiative he explained, would significantly improve their operational efficiency and increase the IGR of the State without increasing any tax rate.
His words: “Our focus for the next fiscal year would be to transform our processes from a semi-manual system to full automation. We intend to achieve an end-to-end automation of all our tax processes.”
The organization which has just ended a two day strategy session in preparedness for the 2025 fiscal year, noted among others that, “AKIRS plans to roll out electronic assessment, e-tax clearance process, e-filing of tax returns, automation of registration, collection and reporting processes with the ultimate aim of enhancing efficiency in revenue collection, taxpayers’ experience and minimisation of human interference.
“Also, we will upscale our ongoing tax sensitisation and enlightenment campaign to raise awareness on tax payment as a civic responsibility and deepen voluntary compliance.”
“We assure our taxpayers that in our efforts to consistently improve on the State’s IGR, we will be cautious not to embark on any initiatives that will stifle business growth or overburden our individual taxpayers but will align with the impressive and favourable disposition of our dear Governor towards promoting SMEs, entrepreneurship and enabling businesses environment.”
According to reports by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Akwa Ibom ranked fourth among the nine States of the Niger Delta on IGR performance map in 2023. Said Okon Okon: “This impressive growth is attributable to significant governance reforms by the State Government, improvement in corporate governance, and operational processes by the Board and the business-enabling environment created by the administration of Governor Umo Eno. Our IGR outlook for 2024 is very impressive and likely to surpass the set target for the year.”
