…urges thriving hospitality, real estate businesses to reciprocate business-friendly environment with realistic taxes
By Henry Oqua
The Edo State Governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki, has signed the 2023 Appropriation Bill into law, emphasising that he will continue with his tradition of using taxpayers’ money for only infrastructure projects across the state.
Speaking shortly after signing the document, Obaseki thanked the State House of Assembly for their dedication to their job, adding that “you’re the set of parliamentarians who have passed the most amount of laws for the people of Edo State and many of those laws have been groundbreaking”.
Explaining the impact expected of the N321.35billion 2023 budget, he described it as a watershed budget because the government broke every record in 2022. “In terms of budget performance, we hit more than 90 percent which is considered excellent,” he said.
The Governor maintained that the State government had expected to rake in N220 billion and came very close to that target, adding, “We insisted on a lot more capital expenditure than recurrent but unfortunately we had a very long and extended rainy season but as you can see now, contractors are on site working on all the roads across all senatorial districts of the state.”
“More of the resources were spent on serving the people, building infrastructure, and all the things people need for their businesses to thrive. We’ve also invested in education, skills development, job creation and healthcare. These areas gulped up the bulk of what we spent and earned in the year 2022.”
Speaking on the focus of his administration in the next fiscal year, the Governor reiterated his previous position on property tax, insisting that since the government’s investments had resulted in improved property earnings for individuals and businesses, the beneficiaries will be expected and should be more willing to pay appropriate tax back to the government.
“We now know that we can meet our target for 2023 provided the citizens of the State cooperate with us. The bulk of this budget will be funded from internally generated revenues and we can see where the revenues are coming from because of the improvement in the economic environment. We can see that businesses are thriving, particularly in construction and real estate services and we expect that those businesses will pay the taxes due.
“When the value of your property moves from N3million to N30million and your rental incomes move from 2 million to 10 million, I think it’s only fair and proper that you pay the appropriate taxes from the revenues you have earned,” he emphasised.
Beaming the spotlight on the real estate and hospitality industries, the Governor noted that data are available to show which businesses have earned more in the last four years.
According to him, “The government is doing its best to boost the economic environment and so we expect that citizens must also contribute by paying their tax revenues. Compared to four years ago, most people who run hotels and hospitality businesses can attest that their occupancy rates are seeing an all-time high. So when you see developments like these, we expect that for us to sustain it, people must pay their taxes.
“So for 2023, we are going to be emphasising revenue collection for those who are making money, we know them, we see them and we have the data. So please we will seek your cooperation, people should come out early and do the assessment themselves and pay the appropriate taxes. We believe that we will earn what we estimate to earn, we are not relying solely on oil receipts from the Federal Government and we want to assure Edo citizens that every kobo of tax revenue earned will be spent on capital development. That is what we’ve done to date, we do not spend one kobo of IGR on servicing the government, every kobo is spent on paying contractors,” he concluded.
Addressing the negative commentary around the performance of his administration in building roads, Governor Obaseki said a lot of people are angry with the government because he has insisted on getting value for taxpayers’ money spent by refusing to allow inflated contracts for road construction.
“Our contracts are not inflated, we are getting a lot of backlashes, a lot of people are angry with us, people who used to benefit from that, but we don’t mind because we are saving money for Edo people and trying to get value for them. we no longer spend twice the amount we spend on building roads, so instead of building two roads in the past, you built one, today we build those two roads with an estimate for one,” he said.
On November 16, 2022, Governor Obaseki presented the 2023 Budget of Resilience and Transformation to the House of Assembly, with spendings on road transportation and economic enablers receiving 17 and 18 percent of the total sum respectively.
