Financial Derivatives Company Limited (FDC) has predicted that Nigeria’s federally collected revenue is likely to decline further by about 25% this quarter.
Bismarck Rewane, the chief executive officer, said the declining revenue will serve as a wake-up call for Nigeria.
He stated this at a breakfast meeting on e-filing organised by SystemSpecs Limited for stakeholders held in Lagos recently.
Rewane said that oil and gas constitute over 60% of Nigeria’s fiscal revenue, oil accounts for 94% of Nigeria’s export and approximately 67% of current account receipts in the country. He noted that a 58% drop in oil prices coincided with an approximately 18% decline in government revenue in the fourth quarter of 2014.
A decline in prices of other commodities is unlikely to cushion the effect of lower oil exports on the balance of trade.
According to him, whenever revenue declines, people tend to be more efficient, and efficiency is most prominent in the payment and settlement system.
Rewane explained that the more efficient payment services are, the more the number of transactions, and the more the society gets out of it.
He said: “The external and internal balances of an economy would depend almost entirely on the efficiency of its payment system”.
The Systemspecs Managing Director, John Obaro announced that e-filing, which is driven by the Remitta platform, would help boost the government’s revenue.
Remitta, developed by Systemspecs, was adopted by the Central Bank of Nigeria for the payment and collection of funds.
Obaro said: “With Remitta, you can automatically submit matching schedules when you pay pensions to PFAs. For example, tax authorities or operatives. All these are done electronically. People can make payments to another party using their credit or debit cards.It is a single platform which allows you make payments to various people and at the same time on the same platform, you empower people who want to make payment to you to pay through any channel that is convenient for them”.
John Obaro also added: “Remitta is connected to all core banking applications of all the banks in Nigeria today. You can define approval limits for people who want to make payments with designated officers who you can define you rules to.With Remitta you can make all your payments from the same platform, for each payment you have, you get a comprehensive proof of payment delivered to the beneficiary and you can easily track all payments irrespective of the funding banks.”
