The federal government says it will in a matter of days launch the consumer credit scheme it recently introduced to increase the purchasing power of Nigerians, boost the productive capacity of companies and stimulate growth.
Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Dr Zacch Adedeji disclosed this yesterday when he received the management team of Guinness Nigeria Plc led by the Chief Executive Officer, Adebayo Alli, who paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
Adedeji said the introduction of the consumer credit scheme will set the right fundamentals most especially for the kind of products Guinness sells.
According to him, “In an economy of our size, it will be extremely difficult if we don’t have a consumer credit scheme. People need to eat before they drink. But when they have credit to buy things, this gives them more money that they can use to come to drink and relax after work.
“In a couple of days, the consumer credit scheme will be launched and what that will do is to really set the right fundamentals most especially for the kind of products you sell.”
He said President Bola Tinubu has a strategic plan that is being religiously followed to lead the country out of the current economic challenges., noting that the plan warranted the president’s directive that a conducive environment be created for businesses to flourish and grow the economy.
“The president gave a directive that he wants a single digit tax in the country, meaning that the maximum number of taxes we will have after the work of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms will be nine taxes,” he said.
“We will not introduce additional taxes nor increase any form of taxes. We are only determined to increase the pie. We want to grow the pie such that even if we are taking the same percentage of the bigger pie, the result will be huge.”
Adedeji informed the visitors that the operations of the FIRS has been restructured in such a way that it is now effectively carrying out its duty of assessing, collecting and accounting for taxes.
“We have improved the way we relate with our customers by rearranging our operations based on our customers, using their turnover as the basis to categorise them into large, medium and small,” he said.
He promised the visitors that FIRS was out to serve taxpayers. “You taxpayers are not armed robbers or criminals that we will be chasing about. FIRS is also not a law enforcement organisation. We are partners in progress,” he said.
The FIRS boss said that another bold decision President Tinubu has taken is the birth of the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Fund. “Some of the raw materials you source locally are produced in the Northern part of the country. The infrastructure deficit that we have increases the cost of moving these materials from one place to another.
“Based on the president’s holistic plan, in the next three years, we will have a very good rail and road transportation network that will make movement of goods and raw materials easy and remove most of the bottlenecks for industries,” he said.
Earlier, Guinness CEO, Alli, pledged that the company would continue to do business in the country, notwithstanding macro-economic challenges being faced.
“We have come to know FIRS more and also tell you a little bit about who we are as a large taxpayer so you can understand our world, the value we add to Nigeria, despite the macroeconomic situation facing us,” he said.
He assured the FIRS chairman that Guinness would continue to invest in the country, just as he sought assurances from the tax authority in terms of the role it would play “in getting the economy back on the right path from the recovery point of view.”