Lagos- The Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) on Thursday urged the Federal Government to cut down the proposed recurrent expenditure in 2015 budget.
The President of CITN, Mac-Anthony Dike ,made the call at the instituute’s first quarterly news conference on tax and revenue issues in Lagos.
According to Dike, savings ising from this could be used to boost critical areas needed to hedge the economy from revenue volatilities.
He also called on the government not to base its budget beyond 55 dollars per barrell benchmark citing what he termed the realities of the global crude oil market.
Dike advised government to also focus on using any excess from a rise in crude oil price to boost the critical revenue buffer needed to hedge the economy from revenue volatilities.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]
The Institute, he said, also welcomed reports that the government was thinking of refocussing on exploiting the non-oil sector to boost its revenue.
“We reiterate our call on government to consider the current non-oil sector growth drivers such as mining, information and communication, telecommunications and information services as well as real estate sectors
“This sectors constitute 14.50%, 17.02%, 10.94%, 8.69% and 8.02% respectively, of Gross Domestic Product(GDP) as at 2013,” Dike said.
The president said the institute was concerned with the reported cases of violence in some parts of the country in the course of the current electioneering campaign.
“In so far as politicians genuinely seek to serve the interest of the populace, they should do everything in their power to hold true to the spirit of service by conducting themselves with the highest sense of decorum.
“The Institute is of the opinion that they should never exhibit anything short of this.”
He called on political parties to spell out their tax policy they intend to implement if they are elected to run the government.(NAN).
