Authorities of the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) are looking to rake in at least ₦3billion revenue from outdoor advertising by the first half of 2020.
According to the Director, FCT Department of Outdoor Advertisement and Signage (DOAS), Dr. Babagana Adam, the department has the capacity to generate more than the ₦500million realized in 2019 but has been limited by unlawful agents exploiting the system.
Adam, however, told newsmen over the weekend that the agency is working on advanced IT-driven ways of revenue collection in order to block leakages and prevent further evasion of advertisement taxes:
“We generated N500million in 2019 but the plan is to hit the billion Naira mark by May 2020.
“At the rate we are going, we will exceed, and probably we will be talking about N3billion revenue by May 2020.
“The department is currently working out payment plans that will discourage agents from accumulating debts.
“The problem is that the FCT has been in limbo for so long and practitioners were allowed to owe for too long unlike places like Lagos, Nigeria, where you dare not owe for one month.
“What we intend to do is to introduce quarterly payment plan so agents and practitioners will not accumulate debts.”
The Director also said that the agency is working tirelessly to recover the N1.9billion outstanding debt being owed by 86 practitioners who ran advertisement on the 707 billboards across the city.
Consequently, the agency may soon be delisting 45 practitioners that have failed to reconcile their debt profile with DOAS.
On ways of resolving issues of double taxation on businesses, the DOAS boss said,
“Going forward, what we intend to do is: if any of the area councils collects advert revenues directly from agents and practitioners, we will calculate all the monies they have collected through the back door, then deduct that amount from the allocation due them.
“That way, the area councils will realize that there is no point using their own resources to collect revenues themselves when they can just allow DOAS do the collection and give them the percentage due them.
“DOAS, as an establishment of the law, does not do double taxation. If an agent claims to have made payment to area councils, we investigate and track such claims.
“But where the money goes to private hands with no evidence of such payment made into area councils’ accounts, then such a business will have to bear the consequences; but where they have proof of payment, we simply make deductions before paying allocations to that area council.”
