To woo new investors, Oba George Akande, the Olusi of Usi Ekiti has urged the Ekiti State Government to grant tax holiday incentives.
This, he said, was important in the State’s continued drive to boost it’s Internally Generated Revenue(IGR).
The traditional ruler said this at the Olusi annual lecture held at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan in Our State.
This is contained in a statement issued by Mr Sunday Olajide, the spokesman for the traditional ruler and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) on Wednesday.
The traditional leader noted that generating more IGR through increase in taxes from very few companies operating in the state could be counter productive.
Akande decried what he described as the abysmally poor performance of Ekiti’s IGR when compared to other states of the federation.
According to him, Lagos State which is the state with the highest IGR profile in the country is not achieving the feat through the efforts of the residents of state alone.
“While we have many sons and daughters from Ekiti contributing so much to Lagos State’s IGR, some of these indigenes have never paid a dime into the coffers of Ekiti State and we don’t have high tax- paying companies in the state.”
According to him, Ekiti State ranks among the lowest in remittances to the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) because over 90 percent of businesses owned by Ekiti sons and daughters are registered outside Ekiti.
He advised Ekiti investors to change their companies’ registered addresses at the Corporate Affairs Comission( CAC) to reflect their local addresses in Ekiti.
This, he said, would boost the state’s returns with the FIRS.
“If we all change our registered business addresses to Ekiti State, tax returns from such enterprises will be filed at, and credited to the Ekiti State office of the FIRS.
“This will go a long way to boost the state’s rating in the Federal Government’s books, help in the allocation of facilities and other Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) opportunities into the country and Ekiti State.”
He, however, said that to tackle unemployment, youths should be reoriented to accept the reality that the acquisition of academic certificates alone does not mean they must work in a particular sector of the nation’s economy.
He emphasised that youths must be ready to acquire vocational skills aside their educational pursuits.
He also urged the business communities and the wealthy in the society to assist the academia in funding research works that would help the nation’s economy to grow.
“Universities will not be able to fund research works on their own because research and development are money gulping ventures,” the monarch said.
According to him, the government is the driver of the nation’s economy.
He advised the government to also enact policies that are pro-business to attract credible investors for the good of all.
He said that the nation’s environment should be made more conducive for businesses to thrive.
The traditional ruler added that the government should always discourage the penchant for backdating implementation of policies.
He said that such could have financial implications, distort projection of investors and serve as disincentives to the system.
Speaking earlier, the guest lecturer, Prof. Ayodeji Oluleye, charged the government to jump start the nation’s economy from the grass roots by providing them with necessary infrastructure.
He said that government should concentrate more of its attentions in encouraging entrepreneurs to establish their factories in the rural communities.
Oluleye said that such policy should be the foundation for the development of nation’s economy.(NAN)
