Acting Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Samuel Ogungbesan, has said the Federal Government got about N1.842 trillion revenue generated from taxes in the first half of 2015.
Ogungbesan said the money was paid into the Federation Account shared by the three tiers of government.
The FIRS boss said this while briefing Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, on the activities of his agency, accompanied by his senior management officers.
Ogungbesan, however, noted that Nigeria could have got more if not for the numerous social, political and economic challenges.
In a breakdown given to the Senate President, he said the agency raised N697 billion from Petroleum Profit Tax; N778 billion from the Company Income Tax and N376 billion as Value Added Tax, adding also that between N12 billion and N15 billion import VAT was still being expected from the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS).
The agency’s annual target for the oil and gas sector is N1.4 trillion with an expected monthly target of N123.74 billion.
“We have oil but most of the foreign companies are not picking up our oil anymore because they have developed their own oil. Oil and gas, which is key to the economy, has not been doing too well.
This is as a result of many factors. Many of these are completely outside our control, including the crash of price of oil in the international market.
“Although it started gathering some momentum in the last three months, as at today, it is $59 per barrel. What is within our purview is basically what intervention we can make to shore up from the revenues in the non-oil sector.”
Ogungbesan said his agency had perfected arrangement with the operators of the non-oil sector on how they could be making contributions to government on a regular basis instead of the current annual or bi-annual remittances so that there would always be money to fund the budget.