The country earned a total of N876.09bn from Value Added Tax (VAT) in the first nine months of this year, statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have revealed.
The NBS in its VAT report which was released on Monday said the sum of N289.03bn was generated in the first quarter while N311.94bn and N275.11bn were generated in the second and third quarters of the year respectively.
A breakdown of the N876.09bn showed that the highest amount of N256.86bn was received from non-import foreign VAT, while N179.85bn was generated from Nigeria Customs import VAT.
A further analysis of the VAT report showed that N85.97bn was received from professional services; breweries, bottling and beverages contributed N31.82bn; banks and financial institutions, N12.68bn; commercial and trading, N45.65bn; while oil production had N27.64bn VAT.
Similarly, the government generated VAT of N1.98bn from agricultural plantations; automobiles and assembling, N1.39bn; building and construction, N7.22bn; chemicals, paints and allied industries, N1.45bn; conglomerates, N3.44bn; federal ministries and parastatals, N25.08bn.
In the same vein, VAT from gas generated N3.59bn; hotels and catering, N6.02bn; local government councils, N1.37bn; mining, N154.76m; others N11.05bn; offshore operations, N1.81bn; oil marketing, N6.51bn; other manufacturing, N96.12bn and petro-chemical and petroleum refineries, N3.21bn.
Others are pharmaceutical, soaps and toiletries, N742.8m; pioneering, N7.86bn; professional services N85.97bn; properties and investments, N3.15bn; publishing, printing, paper packaging, N1.28bn; state ministries and parastatals, N29.46bn; stevedoring, clearing and forwarding, N4.29bn; textile and garment industry, N868.88m; transport and haulage services, N17.63bn.
The report read in part, “Sectoral distribution of Value Added Tax data for Q3 2019 reflected that the sum of N275.12bn was generated as VAT in Q3 2019 as against N311.94bn generated in Q2 2019 and N273.50bn generated in Q3 2018.
“Professional services generated the highest amount of VAT with N32.09bn generated and closely followed by other manufacturing generating N30.27bn; commercial and trading generating N14.47bn while mining generated the least and closely followed by textile and garment industry and pharmaceutical, soaps and toiletries with N44.30m, N253.83m and N291.06m generated respectively.
“Out of the total amounted generated in Q3 2019, N150.74bn was generated as non-import VAT locally while N63.00bn was generated as non-import VAT for foreign.
“The balance of N61.37bn was generated as NCS-import VAT.”
The Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mr Tunde Fowler, had said that Nigeria would earn at least 80 per cent of its revenues from the non-oil sector of the economy in the next three years.
He noted that the non-oil sector’s contribution to the Nigerian economy had risen to 60 per cent by November 2019 from 54 per cent in December 2018.
Fowler said that the continuous drop in oil prices was a sign that attention should be focused on the non-oil sector of the economy which he said was more sustainable.
He said, “We are moving from oil-dependent to non-oil-dependent economy. We believe that in the next three years, the non-oil sector is going to contribute at least 80 per cent of the total revenue.”
He noted that the deployment of online solutions was making tax administration more efficient, transparent and convenient.
