The Taraba State Internal Revenue Service (TSIRS), says it has improved internally generated revenue (IGR) from ₦800 million to ₦1.6 billion since the assumption of its new leadership in June 2024.
Brig. Gen. Jeremiah Faransa (rtd), Chairman of the TSIRS, made the disclosure on Thursday in Jalingo, while speaking to newsmen in his office on the activities of the service since he assumed office in June 2024.
Faransa also revealed that the IGR has risen from ₦10 billion in 2023 to over ₦11 billion as of September 2024. He said that the service was expected to hit over ₦15 billion IGR when the October, November and December collections would be computed on its chat.
Faransa attributed poor IGR to non-implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), proliferation of revenue and security checkpoints, revenue linkages, analogue operations in the collection of revenues and lack of training and retraining of the service’s staff among others.
The chairman, however, said that he has closed down all the illegal revenue checkpoints across the 16 local government areas of the state. He said that the state laws bordering on revenue collection only recognised the TSIRS as the only organisation with the responsibility of revenue collection.
He further stated that the staff of the service had since embarked on training and retraining to engage in digital operations to harmonise activities of revenue collections in the state.
“It is only in Taraba that you will discover multiple illegal checkpoints, we are not in a war zone where they mount multiple checkpoints on the roads.
“The revenue collections were before now going into the pickets of some individuals, we have blocked the leakages, we have brought back revenue collections in the hands of government and our IGR has significantly improved.
“Before I assumed office in June 2024, the state use to generate between ₦700 to ₦800 million, we are now generating over ₦1.6 billion per month.
“As at from January to September, which is so far the last collection on our revenue central chat, we are having over ₦11 billion as against ₦10 billion for the whole of 2023.
“By the time we take the remaining three months of the year 2024, we should be hitting ₦15 billion, which is a headway.
"We must have to think outside federation account, nobody can build Taraba for us, is our responsibility and we have to support Gov. Kefas to achieve his transformation agenda,”. Faransa stated.