FG considering excise duties on carbonated drinks —Ahmed – TheNigerialawyer

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs
Zainab Ahmed has said that the Federal Government was considering
placing excise duties on carbonated drinks in order to boost its
revenue base.

Ahmed said this on Thursday on the sidelines of the World
Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings holding in Washington DC,
United States.

Ahmed said Value Added Tax increase had been proposed, adding
that other streams of revenue such as excise duties on carbonated
drinks are being introduced.

“In expanding the revenue base, we have proposed the increase of
VAT but there are also other revenue streams that we are looking at
and some of them include the introduction of excise duties on
carbonated drinks but there is a process to doing these things.

“The fact that our revenue is underperforming is not an excuse
to bring down our revenue that is required to fund the national
budget.

“In 2018, our revenue performed at a level of 58 per cent.
Half-year 2019, our performance moved up slightly to 58 per cent.
But that is not an excuse to reduce revenue. Because it means we
are all sanctioning underperformance.

“So we have to push the agencies. We have to push ourselves to
meet those targets. Those targets are not designed by the Ministry
of Finance, Budget and National Planning, the agencies proposed
those targets.

“But we sit down with them and interrogate them. For example,
the NNPC has a production capacity of 2.5 million barrels per
day.

“In 2019, they wanted a target of 2.5 million barrels per day
but we insisted on prudence and scaled it down to 2.3 million. And
the performance is 1.98 million effectively including 100,000 per
day that is used to settle cash call earnings but the capacity is
there.

She added, “So why should we not be looking at what do we have
to do to make sure the capacity utilisation is attained?

“Why do we want to reduce it because we are underperforming? We
are lucky that crude oil in 2018, outperformed the budget because
we budgeted $60 per barrel and we ended up with an average of $67
per barrel.

“Otherwise, if we had lower prices, the performance wouldn’t
have been achieved.”