By Precious Oham
The Ekiti State government has trained Heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, on how to improve the Internal Generated Revenue, IGR, of the state.
The four-day CBS/SoftTax Awareness and Adoption Seminar for MDAs was organised by the Ekiti State Internal Revenue Service, EKIRS, for improved revenue generation.
Speaking during the programme, Governor Biodun Oyebanji, represented by the Commissioner for Budget, Economic Planning and Performance Management, Niyi Adebayo called for robust collaboration among the MDAs to ensure that the revenue of the state is at the highest level.
According to him such development would enable government have access to necessary resources needed to attend to the developmental needs of the people.
His words: “Today is just to look at how these MDAs can work together to achieve results. Let’s do what we can to generate revenue for the state government. It is very important to ensure the outcome. We want more revenue.
“I encourage everyone with an open mind on how to move Ekiti forward and improve revenue generation. We should do our little to support the efforts of the governor by being active participants in our roles to ensure the revenue of Ekiti State is at the highest level.”
On his part, Chairman of EKIRS, Niran Olatona revealed that the agency has introduced technology to aid revenue generation, reduce cash collection and curb multiple taxation to make life easier for the masses.
He equally noted that part of the four-day event is to sensitize the participants on revenue reporting, revenue generation and the administration of revenue.
“The programme is about collaborating with MDAs on how to generate better revenues for our dear state. We have told them how important it is for us to have proper revenue reporting, generation and administration.
“Part of it is how we can make use of technology to make it easy for our people to pay and to have more people in the tax net so that the burden will not be on a few people.”