From Chidi Nnadi, Enugu
Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State has announced that policies and measures adopted by his administration to plug leakages in revenues accruing to the state have started yielding results with the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) up from N14 billion in 2016 to N18 billion as at October this year.
The governor who disclosed this at the commissioning of the rehabilitated state revenue centre, launching of the revenue automation project and release of operational vehicles to the Enugu State Internal Revenue Service (ESIRS) said that as he implemented his four-point agenda set at the inception of his administration, paucity of fund became a major impediment.
He said that although the four-point agenda had yielded good results in rapid development and increase in the standard of living by the people of the state, the government needed to do more, therefore the need to tighten the revenue sources.
According to Ugwuanyi, the state adopted the pay direct system which aligns with the Treasury Single Account (TSA) model, as well as empowered the ESIRS to eliminate corruption in its processes and ramp up IGR for the state.
The governor also directed the ESIRS to eliminate permanently manual processes in its operations, urging them to use the new automation regime in its activities, particularly in the collection of government revenues such as enumeration, assessment, collections, issuance of tax clearance certificates, levies, fees and other non-tax revenues by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government.
Assessing the results the measures have yielded in the last 10 months, he said “this is quite commendable given that revenues were dropping by the time we implemented these measures.
“The triple events that are taking place today are designed to further deepen and strengthen ongoing reforms in the revenue service and equip the agency to meet the needs of government and serve the good people of Enugu State better.
“The renovated headquarters, the revenue centre which we commission today is a testimony to the government’s resolve to build a first class revenue agency that meets the current and future needs of Enugu State.”
The Managing Director of Byteworks Solutions Ltd, the consulting firm that handled the Enugu automation project, Mr. Edmund Ezukwu, told Sunnewsonline that the Internally Generated Revenue Central System (ICS) deployed to ESIRS “is a scalable, portable and agile public finance automation solution that enables states and local governments manage, control, and monitor the collection of tax and other revenues generated by a state in real-time.”