The Zamfara State Board of Internal Revenue Services says the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) base of the state had improved in spite of the security challenges facing the state.

The Board’s Chairman, Alhaji Ali-Akilu Dama disclosed this while speaking to newsmen in Gusau, on Tuesday.

He announced that the board was able to collect about a billion naira as at end of September, 2021, attributing the successes recorded to the measures introduced by the board inline with the present administration’s commitment to improve the state’s IGR.

“Since our assumption in office, we introduced new measures to improve the IGR of the state.

“Part of the measures is sensitisation of the general public, especially the taxpayers, because we learned that there was low awareness amongst people of the state as regards payment of taxes.

“Our partnership with the media also helped us in this regard because, we witnessed improvement in revenue generation in the state,” Dama said.

He further noted that out of over N2 billion target of the board for the year 2021, as at end of third quarter, “we were able to collect about a billion naira, despite the security challenges facing the state.

“We initiated e-payment channels, where tax payers pay through Remita”, he added.

According to him, the board had improved the welfare and capacity building of its staff, in order to motivate them on revenue collection and other administrative and technical operations of the board.

He said more programmes were on the way to promote staff training and retraining.

“We also embarked on the registration of various small and medium scale businesses through their unions, to have their accurate number with a view to collecting taxes from them.

“These measures will also help in the security sector of the state as any person registered for tax payment will have his identity card registered.

“Under this measure, we identified 43 sectors of different categories of businesses., including 334 animal sellers and 412 private schools,” he said.