Preparations are already in top gear ahead of the maiden edition of the E-Revenue Sustainability Conference, an annual forum organized by Intermarc Consulting Limited and other stakeholders in the financial services sector of the economy.
According to the organizers, the conference will proffer strategies and tactics to grow revenues from existing and new IGR sources within the federation, while also exploring effective ways of collecting revenues electronically for the nation’s economic growth.
In a chat with newsmen in Lagos, the CEO, Intermarc Consulting Limited, Mr. Adeyinka Adeyemi noted that if information communication technology (ICT) is deployed to government revenue collection and administration, the internally generated revenues (IGRs) will displace crude oil.
Adeyemi lamented that most state governments generate 15 per cent of their revenue and depend on federal allocation for sustenance, arguing that this is no longer sustainable. Government, he said, needs to focus on a planned strategy for a sharp turn-around from oil dependence to self-sustainability.
“The challenge with IGR however is how government will design and develop sustainable strategies to grow revenue as well as effective ways to collect these revenues sustainably across the federation. This can be achieved on the platform of Federal Government’s independent electronic revenue collection scheme throughout the country by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“This new scheme under the treasury single account (TSA) initiative is aimed at deploying the automate platforms and electronic payment channels to handle revenue collection for local and state governments, MDAs straight to into government coffers, he said.
According to him, the conference scheduled for between May 10 and 11, 2016, at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, with the theme; ‘Developing a National Revenue Sustainability Framework’ will provide opportunity for federal and state ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) as well as local authorities to fashion out strategies to grow revenues from existing internally generated revenue (IGR) sources and explore electronic method of collection.
He further said that top stakeholders in the financial sector led by the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun have been penciled down to deliver lecture on the gains of exploring E-Revenue collection.