The National Assembly would henceforth mount more pressure on revenue-generating agencies to ensure that they remit N1trillion yearly to enable the Federal Government fund its budget, Senate President Ahmad Lawan has said.
Lawan said this on Wednesday after the Senate approved President Muhammadu Buhari’s request to revise the 2022-2024 fiscal framework.
He said more revenue would reduce the government’s deficit and dependence on external borrowing to fund the budget, adding that increased revenue could be realised, if the Executive and Legislature collaborate to ensure that the agencies remit money collected by them into the treasury.
“I’m sure that those MDAs that remitted N400 billion could possibly have remitted N1trn, if we had pushed harder,” he said.
”So, we need to push harder because what this means is a revelation, that many of these MDAs have been cornering funds that ordinarily should have gone to the treasury.
”But for many years, they have been taking the funds unfairly and illegally. So, we should not be content with only N400 billion.
“It is a good thing that it happened, because that is an exposure of what they have been doing.
“But we must insist that it goes beyond the N400 billion. I’m sure we can get even more than N1 trillion.
”I agree that we need more revenues, so that we are able to fund our budget with less deficit.“
”But we can only achieve that if the Executive and Legislature work hard to ensure that the revenue generating and collecting agencies perform their jobs very well and remit the funds to the treasury.”
On the government’s resort to external borrowing, Lawan said: “I also agree that the deficit or the borrowing is a bit high. But then again, the choice is limited, because on one breadth we cannot say that we will not borrow because it is becoming too much, when we don’t have ways and means of funding infrastructural development in the country.”
