Fred Itua, Abuja

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The Federal Government, yesterday, said it was targeting about N500 billion from revenues generated from stamp duty.
This is even as the president of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, said the projected figure of N500 billion was too small a target given the volume of electronic transactions on daily basis in the nation’s economy
Lawan said this during an interactive session with heads of revenue generating agencies of the Federal Government in the ongoing public hearing on the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) at the Senate.
He called on the Chairman of the Finance committee and co- Chairman of the Committee of Finance and National Planning and other relevant committees to exhaustively explore the possible revenue derivable from electronic transactions which he believed would surpass N500bn for the 2021 fiscal year.
Lawan’s view was in reaction to the submission by the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze, who said the budget office and the Federal Inland Revenue (FIRS) have agreed on N500 billion projection for the electronic stamp tax for the 2021 fiscal year.
He said the decision was after due consultation with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which warehouses the receiving account.
“We have projection of N500 billion in 2021, we and the FIRS sat together to review this and looked at the number, that translates to a billion naira every week and we felt that is the kind of target we should be pursuing.
“The banks have been collecting this by charging eligible credit to customers and remit to the relevant account in the Central Bank,” Akabueze submitted.
Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue, Mohammed Mamman Nami had told the panel that stamp taxes has reached weekly collection of N1 billion from the payment by the banks.
According to him, “one particular bank remitted about N1.2 billion alone a week.”
Dismissing the figure as abysmal, Ayo Patrick Akinyelure, said the revenue collection agencies were not transparent in their dealings.
“With 300,000 electronic transaction on daily basis, a N5.2 trillion stamp duty cashless transaction is achievable. We are only deceiving ourselves. This is an economy that is the largest in Africa; how can we be operating with a deficit budget for God sakes? It is, therefore, important that the chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, the CBN and other revenue generating agencies have a roundtable on this.
“My Chairman, let three of them – chairman of Federal Inland Revenue, governor Central Bank and Budget Office of the federation – harmonise their position so that there will be policy to the banks to collect real-time the cashless transaction code for all deposit bank, I rest my case Mr Chairman, Akinyelure said.