The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has urged the Federal Government to intensify efforts at diversifying revenue sources to support budget.
Its Executive Chairman, Chairman, Babatunde Fowler, who spoke yesterday in Abuja at the opening of a two-day second annual meeting of the Nigerian Research Tax Network (NRTN), said: “There is now widespread recognition of the need to diversify the sources of government’s budget.”
Represented by the Director, Career and Skill Department, Mrs Junila Takon, Fowler said the need for diversification was also important to build a more sustainable revenue base for inclusive growth.
He said the NRTN conference was aimed at bringing together, stakeholders to showcase the best current researches on the pressing challenges of taxation and revenue in Nigeria.
He said the NRTN, an initiative of the International Centre for Tax and Development and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was launched in 2017 in partnership with the FIRS.
The network, he added, “aims to provide funding for quality, policy-related research partially, or wholly undertaken by Nigerian researchers. It would also provide a platform for knowledge exchange and evidence-based debate on tax issues through workshops, conferences and publications.”
Earlier, the Coordinator of NRTN, Michael Falade, said “rigorous research that can inform both tax policy and practice is the key to raising increased tax revenue in an equitable manner without impeding economic growth.”
Falade lamented that though Nigeria possessed a huge deposit of natural resources, only oil has served as its economic mainstay for a very long time.
He, however, said other sectors could be developed to maximise what the nation has beyond mineral resources and oil.
“To a very large extent oil is a major mainstay in many world economies, but to have a sustainable economy, we have to move beyond oil.
“We cannot just rely on oil; our advocacy is to make the debate around oil and how to really diversify the economy and make practical plans and decisions to put our economy in place,” he said.
He lamented that reliance on oil had limited the country’s ability to finance and deliver critical social programmes and infrastructure to spur national development.