You cannot have 100million people living in poverty and you’re expecting Tax – Peter Obi
Last Monday, September 19, 2022, His Excellency, Dr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, was a guest of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI.
In the LCCI, he spoke on Revenue challenge – FG’s revenue, foreign reserves, debt issue, FDI. In a post sighted by THETALK.NG on Vanguard News Peter Obi said:
On the issue of liquidity, my question is always ‘how do governments of other nations get their own liquidity?’ Because they, too, are going through the same problem we are going through. Yes, we have a revenue crisis but it’s like going to the bank, you have to pay interest. You cannot go to withdraw money without you having paid in.
How do governments pay in? It is the job of governments to ensure there’s an investment in economic growth and create employment, which will allow people to pay taxes. You cannot have 100million people living in poverty and you’re expecting robust revenue.
If you use the global standard of 50 per cent to 60 per cent, with our population of 200 million, you expect that about 100 million to 120 million Nigerians should be working.
But the reality is that just about 40 million people are gainfully employed. So, about 50 million to 70 million people are unproductive, they are not doing anything for you. So, you need to start pulling those people out of poverty, have a robust economic plan and you’ll be able to have the liquidity the government needs to function.
How does government generate money everywhere? Let’s use China, where its last budget which I followed was about $4trillion. Out of this, $3.2trillion came from taxes, 50 per cent of that came from micro and small businesses and 60 per cent of the employment in China is by this group – the employment figure in China is about 800million and this group is providing about 540million.
Again, countries borrow money to invest and you’ll have growth, which in turn brings in more revenue.
Source: THETALK.NG
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