IGR: Plateau generates N7.7bn in 9 months

From Ado Abubakar Musa, Jos

The Plateau Government said it has generated N7.7 billion as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from January to September 2017.
Mr Dashe Arlat, Chairman, Plateau State Internal Revenue Service (PSIRS), disclosed this in a chat with newsmen in Jos yesterday.
Arlat, who described the collection as “huge’’ and “very encouraging’’ attributed it to the hard work and commitment of the services’ staff coupled with the recent reforms it carried out.
The chairman expressed happiness over the monthly collections which represented a sharp deviation from last year’s N6.6 billion.
“From the records, you could see that there is a considerable increase of N1.1 billion in this year’s collection above that of last year within the same period of Jan. – Sept.
“In fact, if not for the challenges we had with our ICT and the laxity from our MDAs during the period, the IGR would have been more than what have now, ’’ he said.
He lamented the delay in remittance of PAY E of federal institutions to the PSIRS and attributed some of short falls to that challenge.
The PSIRS boss expressed optimism that by God’s grace by December ending, the IGR would hit N10 billion as revenue collection for the year 2017.
According to him, efforts are being made to ensure that the MDAs rise to the challenge of meeting up with their mandates on IGR for us to end the year in good and impressive note.
Analyzing the collection within the nine months period, Arlat noted the Service was able to hit N1.2 billion in June and anther N1.1 billion in August, which was sharp deviation from the past.
He further disclosed, “even our collection on drivers and motor Licenses and plate numbers rose to N197.6 million, which is very encouraging within the period under review.’’
Arlet said that PSIRS has been properly armed with Governor Simon Lalong’s recent signing in to law the Revenue Harmonization Bills to bring about reasonable improvement in its IGR.