While we were going round the whole project sites to see what you are doing, a colleague asked a critical question: Where are you getting all the money you are using to do all this work within two years?
Actually, we dont have to rely on third party funding to do what were doing. Since we came in, weve increased our internally generated revenue. When we came in, the highest we did as a state was about N25 billion naira in terms of our IGR, annually. But this years IGR projection is about 600 billion. Were likely going to achieve it, if not exceed that figure. Sometimes, there is a misconception that we increased the tax rates and there are huge tax activities going on in Enugu. But thats a misconception. Theres no such thing.
What we actually did was to expand the tax net. So, we brought in those who were not captured or who were not in the tax net into the tax net and we then also ensure that our processes are automated. So, where we, in the past, dealt with the collection through manual or through cash, we had to stop all that to ensure that payments are now made through an electronic or digital platform and they go straight into the government account. Largely, we are just plugging the leakages and expanding the tax net. Weve been able to grow our tax rate to over 200 folds.
Therefore, you can actually do the calculus if you say that from N25 billion as of May 2023 were expecting N571 billion this year. It is about 2,000 percent increase from where we were. So thats what it is.
Now, if we have a gap in our funding, we also could get a bridger and that bridger is what is referred to as an overdraft or a short term because we know were going to generate the revenue to clear it. But we havent done any long-term loan.