Fred Itua, Abuja
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), has revealed that it intends to generate over N3 billion revenue from outdoor advertisements before the end of first half of 2020.
Director, FCT Department of Outdoor Advertisement and Signage, Babagana Adam, said his department has the capacity to generate more than the N500 million realised in 2019, but conceded that he’s been inhibited due to activities of unlawful agents bleeding the system.
Adam, however, said that the agency is working on advanced IT driven ways of revenue collection in order to block leakages and prevent further evasion of advertisement taxes.
“We generated N500 million in 2019 but the plan is to hit the billion naira mark by May 2020. At the rate we are going, we will exceed that and probably we will be talking about N3billion revenue by May 2020.”
He added that the department is currently working out payment plans that will discourage agents from accumulating debts. “The problem is that the FCT has been in limbo for so long and practitioners were allowed to owe for too long unlike places like Lagos where you dare not owe for one month. So what we intend to do is to introduce quarterly payment plan so that agents and practitioners will not accumulate debts.”
The Director also revealed that the agency is working tirelessly to recover the N1.9 billion outstanding debt being owed by 86 practitioners who placed advertisement on the 707 billboards across the city.
He added that the agency may soon be delisting 45 practitioners that have failed to reconcile their debt profile with them. On ways of resolving issues of double taxation on businesses, he said, “Going forward what we intend to do is, if any of the area council collects advert revenue directly from agents and practitioners, we will calculate all the monies they have collected through the back door, then deduct that amount from the allocation due to them. That way the area councils will realise that there is no point using their own resources to collect revenue themselves when they can allow us do the collection and give them the percentage due to them.