By Precious Oham
The Ekiti State government has tasked Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, in the state to complement the efforts of government in providing dividends of democracy to the people by improving its revenue generation.
Governor Biodun Oyebanji made the call on Tuesday in Ado-Ekiti at a four-day CBS/SoftTax Awareness and Adoption Seminar for MDAs in the state, organised by the Ekiti State Internal Revenue Service, EKIRS, and powered by Soft Alliance.
Oyebanji, represented by the Commissioner for Budget, Economic Planning and Performance Management, Niyi Adebayo called for robust collaboration among the MDAs to ensure that the revenue of the state is at the highest level.
His words: “Today is just to look at how these MDAs can work together to achieve results. Let’s do what we can to generate revenue for the state government. It is very important to ensure the outcome. We want more revenue.
“I encourage everyone with an open mind on how to move Ekiti forward and improve revenue generation. We should do our little to support the efforts of the governor by being active participants in our roles to ensure the revenue of Ekiti State is at the highest level.”
On his part, Chairman of EKIRS, Niran Olatona revealed that the agency has introduced technology to aid revenue generation, reduce cash collection and curb multiple taxation to make life easier for the masses.
He equally noted that part of the four-day event is to sensitize the participants on revenue reporting, revenue generation and the administration of revenue.
“The programme is about collaborating with MDAs on how to generate better revenues for our dear state. We have told them how important it is for us to have proper revenue reporting, generation and administration.
“Part of it is how we can make use of technology to make it easy for our people to pay and to have more people in the tax net so that the burden will not be on a few people.”