The Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Babatunde Fowler, has dismissed the claim that the FIRS, awarded huge contracts to a young firm – Active Solution Integrated Synergy without following due procurement process.
Fowler denied the allegation yesterday when he appeared before the House of Representatives Ad-Hoc committee on procurement.
He said that the FIRS awarded contracts to the young company on account of the near state of emergency in Nigeria’s economy, which prompted FIRS to think outside the box to generate enough revenue for the nation.
The FIRS Chairman further explained that the emergence of the company was in the interest of the nation since working with the company will give Nigeria more revenue, yet was at no cost to the nation.
Apart from being at no cost to the nation, the contract required no financial commitment or upfront payment to the consultant.
This, he noted was better than the old practice, where consultants were paid for such jobs either they pull in money or not.
He said: “The proposal from Active Solution Integrated Synergy Ltd, came at the nick of time when FIRS tax revenue collection was nose-diving as a result of the recession in the economy and the perpetual fall in crude oil prices which exerted more pressure on non-oil revenue.
“Government set high revenue targets which FIRS was expected to meet. FIRS was determined to pass the litmus test set by the high revenue target and is poised to provide succor to government funding challenges.
“This FIRS did by declaring state of emergency in tax revenue collection. The strategy adopted by FIRS to boost tax revenue collection was to deploy more automation in the tax revenue collection machinery to deepen the already existing automated platform and catch transactions which may have escaped the tax view before now.
“This trend prompted FIRS to adopt automations that facilitate handshake with some specific sectors of the economy.
“As we are all aware, telecoms sector is an area that the transactions are not very open to many and there has been no lucid knowledge about revenue presentations in-spite of the much accountants have been able to report. This is attributable to the total automation of their operations.
“The only way to crack into such systems was to allow for operators who understand the terrain to lend a helping hand with a view to achieving more tax revenue.”
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