Executive Chairman, Kwara State Internal Revenue Services (KWIRS), Professor Muritala Awodun yesterday said the state was still far behind in achieving her projected monthly revenue target of N5billion even as he declared that it raked in N23billion for 2018.
“We know we are not there yet, our potential IGR projection in 2015 is N5 billion monthly and if we are just at 2billion ,we are not there yet”, he said.
The KWIRS boss made the declaration in Ilorin during the agency’s annual interaction with journalists on its activities in the previous years.
He said though the agency had graduated the state IGR from N6milion monthly it inherited in 2015 to N2 billion, the service was still hoping to hit its target of N5billion monthly.
He said the state had moved up to 9th position out of 36 states amongst those toping revenue generations in the country.
He added that the state was ranked second after Lagos by Africa’s Report Index which according to him, was based on the state’s success in poverty reduction, access to electricity, ease of doing business amongst others.
Speaking on the community impact activities of the revenue agency, Awodun said 723 direct jobs have so far been created by the agency in addition to 2,500 indirect jobs. cre0n project and infrastructure development, the revenue boss said 40 projects that were abandoned before the coming on board of the agency due to dwindling resources have been completed with additional new ones being commissioned across the state.
He said the projects were made possible with the Infrastructure Fund (I-Fk) fund of the state government which mandates the agency to commit N500 million monthly.
