. As Guinness commits to investing more in Nigeria
President Bola Tinubu has a strategic plan that is being religiously followed to lead the country out of the current economic challenges, chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue, Zacch Adedeji, has said.
Adedeji spoke on Wednesday when the Chief Executive Officer of Guinness Nigeria, Adebayo Alli, led the management team of the company on a visit to the Revenue House in Abuja.
According to a statement by Dare Adekanmbi, Special Adviser on Media to the FIRS chairman, the plan warranted the president’s directive that a conducive environment be created for businesses to flourish and grow the economy.
“The president gave a directive that he wants a single digit tax in the country, meaning that the maximum number of taxes we will have after the work of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms will be nine taxes.
“For us at FIRS, we have responded to that directive. We want to grow the pie such that even if we are taking the same percentage of the bigger pie, the result will be huge.
“By God’s grace, we will not introduce additional taxes nor increase any form of taxes. We are only determined to increase the pie.
“We have restructured our operations at FIRS in such a way that we are now effectively carrying out our duty of assessing, collecting and accounting for taxes.
“We used to have functional types of taxes, but we have identified that the only customers we have are the taxpayers. We have improved the way we relate with our customers by rearranging our operations based on our customers, using their turnover as the basis to categorise them into large, medium and small.
“We did this to actually develop expertise in what we do. Secondly, to provide you with a one-stop shop for your activities. If you are in a large tax group, you only need to go to one office to pay all forms of taxes, including audit and other activities. You don’t need to move from one office to another again.
“We are here to serve you. You taxpayers are not armed robbers or criminals that we will be chasing about. FIRS is also not a law enforcement organisation. We are partners in progress.
“You are one of the trees in our vineyard. The only thing we can do is to ensure you are well watered and pruned so you can bear good fruits for us to have plenty of harvest,” he said.
He added that President Tinubu, through the consumer credit scheme recently introduced, aimed at increasing the purchasing power of Nigerians to boost the productive capacity of companies and stimulate growth.
“In a couple of days, the consumer credit scheme will be launched and what that will do is to really set the right fundamentals most especially for the kind of products you sell.
“In an economy of our size, it will be extremely difficult if we don’t have a consumer credit scheme. People need to eat before they drink. But when they have credit to buy things, this gives them more money that they can use to come to drink and relax after work.
“More so, the president has also directed the commencement of a single window platform for your logistics at the ports. So, instead of having to pay in many places, you can now do that through the platform, most especially for companies like yours.
“You know your products before they come into the country, so you pay before they arrive as the issue of port congestion that delays the time you get your raw materials has been taken care of now.
“Another bold decision the president has also taken is the birth of the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Fund. Some of the raw materials you source locally are produced in the Northern part of the country. The infrastructure deficit that we have increases the cost of moving these materials from one place to another.
“Based on the president’s holistic plan, in the next three years, we will have a very good rail and road transportation network that will make movement of goods and raw materials easy and remove most of the bottlenecks for industries,” he said.
Earlier, Guinness CEO, Alli, had pledged that the company would continue to do business in the country, notwithstanding macro-economic challenges being faced.
“We have come to know FIRS more and also tell you a little bit about who we are as a large taxpayer so you can understand our world, the value we add to Nigeria, despite the macroeconomic situation facing us,” he said.
He assured the FIRS chairman that Guinness would continue to invest in the country, just as he sought assurances from the tax authority in terms of the role it would play “in getting the economy back on the right path from the recovery point of view.”
