By Haruna Salami
The Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Tuesday suspended budget defence of Federal Capital Territory Internal Revenue Service, FCT-IRS, over discrepancies in total expenditures figures.
While the FCT-IRS presented total expenditures of N8,543,306,155 for 2021, the chairman of the Committee, Abubakar Kyari, during consideration of the details said the total amount was not up to N8 billion, but N7.024 billion.
Kyari observed that when you add the balance brought forward from 2020 to the 5% cost of collection and the tax refund from FCTA collections, it would amount to N7.024 billion and not N8.5 billion in the proposal.
FCT-IRS has a unique budgeting system where at the beginning of any financial year it has the total sum it will spend for that fiscal year already in its kitty saved from the preceding year.
The committee therefore wondered why FCT-IRS would be presenting a budget of N8.5 billion when they don’t anticipate any revenue collection for 2021.
“The law is clear, what you utilise is what you collected from the previous year, Kyari said.
With this, the chairman said “may I suggest, my Distinguished colleagues, that they go back and look at the budget itself and report on Thursday, April 1, 20021.
