Plateau Revenue Agency tasks MDAs, LGA’s to boost IGR

By Kingsley Chukwuka

The Plateau State Internal Revenue Service (PSIRS), has pushed for more revenue generation through the Ministries, Department Agencies and Local Government Councils, charging them to up their games.

PSIRS said MDAs and LGAs should take advantage of the Plateau State Consolidated Law 2020 which lays out a unified revenue structure, to boost their respective IGR, as the law was domesticated to help them improve revenue generation.

Speaking on Friday in Jos at a forum tagged Public Sector Strategic Engagement on Taxation, the Chairman of the Agency, Mr Dashe Arlat, said the new 2020 State law which has harmonised revenue collection in the State was aimed at putting the MDAs and LGAs on their toes to perform optimally.

“The law establishes PSIRS as the sole revenue agency to collect and account for all revenue accruable to State government and has also unified revenue administration structure for MDAs and LGAs by creating a revenue council, a revenue administration procedure code, a single revenue collection account and a centralized payment system.

“It is therefore very crucial that you are conversant with these provisions in order to guide you in the execution of your functions for improved revenue yield and avoid falling foul of the law.

“I want to appeal to you to recognize and operate your functions in such a way that they are efficient. With the Governor’s endorsement, MDAS and Local Governments must identify and block all forms of leakages, for the optimal generation of the expected revenue for the State”, Arlat said.

Our correspondent reports that LGAs are faced with varieties of problems. There are problems of sourcing for adequate revenue from the federal and state governments and there are also the problems associated with sourcing for funds via internally generated revenue.

Also, dishonesty on the part of revenue officers who oftentimes divert council’s money for personal use; there is also the encroachment of other levels of government by diverting local government funds. There is therefore an urgent need to review local government revenue generation, our correspondent reports.