The Plateau Government has declared that the State Internal Generated Revenue for the first half of this year stands at N5.19 billion saying there is the tendency that state might meet its target of N13 billion IGR for the year, 2017.

Mr Dashe Arlat, Chairman, Plateau State Internal Revenue Service (PSIRS), who disclosed this to newsmen in Jos said the State revenue services is working round the clock and exploring all avenues to meet the target.

“If you look at the analysis of our collections within the period you see that we are able to hit N1.2 billion in the month of June followed by N877, 88 million recorded in the month of January.

“Our desire as a service is to maintain the one billion naira mark in our monthly collection which I believe be a great boost for the state government to meet its obligations to the people of Plateau, ’’ he asserted.

Arlat, who described the feat within the period as “very huge’’ and “encouraging’’  commended the staff of the service for their resilient and hard work.

According to him, right from January the least of the service monthly collection was recorded in April with only N643, 220M, followed by February – N781, 750M, March – N825, 850M and May – N848, 680M respectively.

He also attributed the feat to introduction of various reforms including `Smart Collection,’ a technology that fast track issuance of Tax Identification Numbers (TIN) to tax payers and quick mode of payment.

Arlet further explained that the new technology adopted has helped at checkmating wastages and gingering the MDAs at improving their collections too.

The chairman said that the service has been waiting for the Governor’s signing of the harmonization bills recently passed by the state House of Assembly for it to improve its revenue collection.

“As I earlier said, the 500 Ad hoc staff we recently engaged are so small for us to achieve our goals but we hope the government will give us the go ahead to employ more hands.

“By the time we more workers, whom we can send out into the street to capture tax payers, especially those within the informal sector, our story will change tremendously’’ the Chairman explained.

The PSIRS Chairman however called on the general public to cooperate with its staff, who will soon be going round to enumerate all houses within the Bukuru-Jos Metropolis for the collection of ground rent.

According to him, numbering all the houses in Plateau and for collection of ground rents was in the interest of the generality of the state toward government meeting its social responsibilities to them.

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Plateau govt rakes N5.19bn as IGR in first half of the year