The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, disclosed this to State House Correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Akande who briefed on behalf of the Minister for Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, said “Amongst several of the memos presented today, was the one by the Minister for Finance, Budget and National Planning on accelerating revenue mobilization reforms, which is a derivative of the federal government’s strategic revenue growth initiative. The significant progress that has been made in this initiative includes the raising of the VAT from 5 per cent to 7 per cent and other measures since 2019.
“This particular initiative is something that is meant to address some of the fiscal challenges of the federal government as it is intended to raise Nigeria’s non-oil revenue potential and oil revenue potential so it is estimated, but with the implementation of this reform, it could result in a potential additional non-oil revenue and oil revenue generation of N3.8tn and N160bn annually. That is N3.8tn increase annually for non-oil revenue and N160bn for oil revenue.”
Akande noted that other crucial memos presented by the Attorney-General of the Federation, which was approved by the Council, are on the accession of Nigeria to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime.
He said: “The convention is a comprehensive national legislation against cybercrime as a framework with technical assistance, as well as international cooperation between states parties to it.”
According to him, the Council also considered a memo presented by the Minister for Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu.
The memo is for the rehabilitation, expansion, and upgrading of Gombe regional water supply projects under the Nigerian National Water Resources.
“The council approved the sum of N939m which has been provided for in the 2022 budget as a counterpart fund for these urban water supply improvements in line with the National Water Supply and Sanitation policy,” Akande said.
