By Salisu Sani-Idris
The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), has identified possible ways of boosting its revenue aimed at surpassing its current revenue generation.
Mr Lukman Dabiri, the Secretary, Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public Private Partnership Secretariat of the FCTA, made this known at an interactive session with newsmen, on Wednesday in Abuja.
Dabiri said that some of the sources it identified and planned to carryout enforcement to ensure compliance, included estates, dispatch riders, Uber and Bolt services, parks, posters and campaign materials, among others.
“I’m telling you confidently by the grace of God, by the time we are able to harness those areas, I assure we can generate revenue three times of what we are getting at the moment.
“For example, dispatch riders that we have everywhere here in Abuja, do they pay revenue, no; go and find out, what about the Uber, do they also pay revenue, I guess no, go and find out.
“The parks that are all over the places, do they pay, go and find out. So, these are some of the areas we have to look into to further boost the revenue of the FCT.
“Even the Lagos state we are talking about, if you put an advert on the street light, you have to pay for them, but here in Abuja, do you pay for them?
“Election is coming, campaign posters will soon flood everywhere; are people paying for such posters, go and find out.
“What we are trying to do is checking ourselves three times on daily basis on how we are performing, it will be open and the machinery we need is there for us,” he said.
Dabiri said that the secretariat had been championing the course of harmonising revenue from all revenue generating agencies in the FCT, with a view to blocking leakages, and grow the revenue base in the FCT.
He said such effort would make the FCT to have the capacity to fund its budget solely through the IGR.
He said the secretariat would continue to extend hand of friendship across all revenue generating agencies in the territory to work assiduously towards achieving the set goals.
Dabiri said that the era of depending on budget was over generally in the world, saying: “COVID-19 has taught us a lesson, at that time many countries were doing their budgets, suddenly COVID came in.” (NAN)
