In this exclusive interview on Channels Television, the Chairman of Presidential Tax and Fiscal Policy Reform, Taiwo Oyedele, says area boys can be trained for tax collection and paid decent salaries to forsake their old ways. He also speaks on efforts made to reduce multiple taxes he describes as a nuisance at the state and local government levels.
Nigerians have been wondering when is this thing gonna take off. I mean, by now, prices should be reduced simply because the Tax Reform Committee, you know, is expected to have come up with some of those recommendations. Let’s begin, how far so far?
Thank you, for having me. So you’re right. I also joined Nigerians to say that I’m impatient to see the results coming up. And more importantly, the impact on the people, particularly the small businesses and the poorest people who are most impacted by the reforms and the different policies. Unfortunately, you know, fiscal policy matters are not as quick. So if you make a monetary policy decision today, you can see the impact tomorrow. Sometimes, fiscals take a little longer but even at that, I feel like we could have made progress faster. We submitted our first report in October with so many recommendations. Over 20 recommendations.
As of today, maybe about three of them have been fully implemented. The remaining ones are in different stages of implementation. The biggest instrument to implement our recommendation is the Emergency Economic Intervention Bill that we came up with, trying to amend about 15 different laws and implement some very important changes that will help with price stability in terms of inflation, will help also in terms of costs that will help in terms of providing relief to the right people who are most impacted, that will help take the burden of small businesses And that would also in a large, a large part help with, you know, foreign exchange as well. I know that’s the purview of the central bank. But we also think it’s an area where we can work together between the monitoring of fiscal authorities and also even align with trade policies. So, those are different stages.
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(FILES) Chairman of Presidential Committee on Tax Policy and Fiscal Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele
In fairness to the lawmakers, we haven’t presented the bills to them. And that was also because once they had the budget for 2024 it became their priority. And we are aware that they were walking around the clock just to get the budget out of the way. But now that that’s out of the way, we want to try and prioritise this and send the bill to them and for them to also pass it as a matter of urgency. So the Nigerian people can begin to feel the positive impact sooner rather than later, you know.
So is there a timeline to this?
It’s difficult to put a timeline to it. I can tell you what the steps are. So the internal processes of getting all the key stakeholders happy with the content is where we are now.
