abdeefggh:
We have a long way to go

Elsueno:


Yeah 33 billion dollar isn't much for Nigerians, BUT ~$500K IS ok for ag@bado boss to spend on hotels in New work ba

Ikinternational:



This is stupid
Way to add stupidity to the thread
Clap for yourself

DeepSight:


The only reason our budget remains that poor - and I repeat with emphasis - the ONLY reason is our unthinkable political corruption. An oil producing country which has no working refineries for almost two decades speaks for itself. Let me also assure you that the theft of this country's resources is beyond the obvious. Those who collude with politicians to quietly steal solid minerals are there. Those who have deliberately sabotaged the power sector are there. If you think the subsidy was just a normal thing that had to go because "Nigerians are lazy" then you dont understand the depth of what transpires in this country. A subsidy that was only about 300 billion some years ago became over six trillion and you dont understand that a mafia was at work. The only reason it has been seized now is simply because Bretton Woods institutions will not continue loaning our political elite money to steal at that level. There are natural subsidies in every country. Its the extreme and even demonic theft of ours that has forced this situation.

Again, if you dont know that all the savings from the removal of subsidy in Nigeria will still be voraciously stolen by politicians, then you dont know Nigeria.

In Nigeria there are roads projects that have been financed by every government since Obasanjo's - and remain untouched. That level of theft should tell you the matter really rests with political corruption. Now that the cookie is crumbling or rather the cookie jar has so shrunk that there is little to steal, they wish to shift the burden to the poor.

Also, like someone pointed out up there, the true measure of a country's wealth is its GDP and not its budget. With our GDP, which has even been dropping, we can have a far bigger budget than 33 Bn. We can grow that GDP very fast also - exponentially even.

My dear, in Nigeria, taxing the people more is also no solution to political corruption. If you dont know that such tax will still disappear and yet Nigerians will move on, then you still dont know your country. Mind you, I dont say dont tax - I simply point out that it will not do jack to corruption.

Available9:


Algeria produces about 4 times more oil than we do but Algeria is not 4 times more corrupt like Nigeria...

Phantom233:

And who said it's only in Nigeria that they loot? But certainly the level and rate of corruption in Nigeria is a case study in heaven .

Phantom233:
It's not about how much you budget but what you actually do with the money. Even if we're given 500billion dollars yearly, our extremly corrupt and wicked Apc political rulers and Allies will reloot the monies without any tangible results

NOETHNICITY:
This is not true at all!

They loot in Nigeria but the looting in USA makes ours look like kindergarten. But it’s because we are poor it looks like they are looting all the money in Nigeria.

Princewill1:
Largest Economies In Africa 2023:

1. Nigeria
GDP- 477B dollar
Budget- 33B

2. Egypt
GDP- 475B
Budget- 97B

3. South Africa
GDP- 405B
Budget- 132B

4. Algeria
GDP- 195B
Budget- 98B

This is simply because Nigeria is collecting lesser taxes despite having bigger economy. And also unlike other countries, Nigeria runs a federal system of govt with components states having their own budgets.

nairalanda1:



Harsh truth

As the World Bank said in 2019, most Nigerians do not pay taxes to state and Federal govenrment

But because na world bank say am, people prefer to attack the messenger.

Meanwhile in the UK, they are so harsh on tax avoiders. Avoid paying TV licence for example, and you could get into trobule.

casualobserver:


1.Algeria doesn’t produce 4 times the oil we produce. They actually produce a lot less than us. Their official OPEC quota is half that of Nigeria.

2. Those figures for Nigeria are actually wrong because they are federal budget and don’t include states. If you include states it is more like $65b

3: It is not about diversified economy, Nigeria is actually a very diversified economy., it is about the fact that Nigerians do not pay the same levels of taxes as in these countries and we tend to generate most of govt revenue from oil royalties…though this is changing . Whereas other countries generate most of their monies from taxes.

codemaniacs:




taxes is not where other countries get money.. other countries get money from tourism, exporting of aeroplanes, cars, trucks, food, oil e.t.c just like Nigeria is already doing.

Nigerians are already paying more than enough taxes..

If 50million people are employed and the minimum wage is 80,000 naira and are each paying taxes of 20,000 naira to the government.

that's 20,000 naira ( $20 ) x 50million people is equal to $1billion and if you add $1billion to the current it does not really do much.

so this proves that taxing the people is not the solution to increasing Nigeria's budget.

nairalanda1:



Unfortunately it is, and your assertion that most countries do not earn money from taxes at all is wrong. (US, UK, many European countries, even Japan and China would disagree with you).

Plus, you mishear me. TAXES is one of several measures I propound on this thread, the others being fighting corruption , diversifying the economy and so forth. Ye should stop getting fixed on the tax bit of my message.

Plus, our oil revenue per year is just about 70 -90 billion dollars. We need something like trillions of dollars before we can talk.

And too bad APC hasn't done anything about it since 2015.

codemaniacs:


It is not taxes..

you cannot compare taxes of countries due to the strength of the currency of the countries..

No one knows if Nigeria is still paying colonial taxes to the british because that $33billion budget is obviously a scam when the same Nigeria has the highest GDP in Africa..

codemaniacs:




taxes is not where other countries get money.. other countries get money from tourism, exporting of aeroplanes, cars, trucks, food, oil e.t.c just like Nigeria is already doing.

Nigerians are already paying more than enough taxes..

If 50million people are employed and the minimum wage is 80,000 naira and are each paying taxes of 20,000 naira to the government.

that's 20,000 naira ( $20 ) x 50million people is equal to $1billion and if you add $1billion to the current it does not really do much.

so this proves that taxing the people is not the solution to increasing Nigeria's budget.

nairalanda1:


Like I said, more taxes is one of the things we need.

Our oil money is not enough, man, even if we fight corruption adequately.

You are free to disagree with me, but if you think that 70% of the population not paying taxes is all right, okay. Na your choice. But we got to reduce our loan habits, and short term taxes is the way to go, long term, diversification, fighting corruption and becoming a manufacturer of goods and services and exporting them.

Kukutenla:

But you have to first lie that Algeria produces more oil than we do. The question to ask is how nigeria has more GDP than all these countries if we are indeed poor and oil dependent.

WannaHowzit:


Tell those drunk & junkie women you🇳🇬👎🏾 can only afford a $33billion budget for 250million people while SA🇿🇦🏆 spends $132billion on 60 million people.

Do you see misplaced priorities 🤣🇳🇬💩💩💩💩 (well deserved poop emojis for you and Japageria)

casualobserver:


Please don’t quote me to make ignorant uninformed comments. Tourism doesn’t bring money to any government. Tourism, exports, etc are just like any other industry. It is taxes on activities, employees etc that brings revenue. The income generated by the industry goes to the operators. If you don’t tax them you make nothing from it no matter how many foreigners come or how many goods you export. If I export $10m worth of goods, it is my money not the government’s. The most the government can do is say I repatriate my foreign income at the official rate and put in in a dorm account. The money is not theirs!!! So how has my exporting $10m worth of good increased govt revenues? It is only when they tax me that they get revenue from my activities and even then, I will pay my taxes in Naira not in forex. The purpose of encouraging exports is to boost forex availability in the system, the money doesn’t belong to the government unless it is the government’s property that is being exported e.g oil or gas.

You are confusing forex with taxes…go and learn basic economics. Govt revenue is from taxes. Exchange rate is from demand and supply of forex. The only reason govt gets a lot of forex from Oil is because govt owns the oil. Will the government own the tourism or the export industries…so why will any forex generated belong to them? Forex inflows determine exchange rates, govt taxes determine govt revenues. Unless you are proposing that government owns businesses the tourism and export sectors,

Go and learn the difference between forex and government revenues or better still go and do a course in economics before commenting on matters above your pay grade.

tsdarkside:


its not only about votin the right president....

its about the system....
if you cant find somebody that will force the ol system to change then it will not matter who you vote....
things will remain the same....
for example....why is it that states that produce oyel can only keep 13%....??

shouldnt it be the other way around....??
its the federal goverment that should be gettin 13% and the oyel producin states keep the rest....
but try to suggest that and see how fight will start....

codemaniacs:


you are the ignorant one.

If a country gets 2 million tourists per year and those tourists spend at least $1000 each that's over $2b just from tourism.
if you export $10m worth of goods before you export you'll pay fees and licenses to the Nigerian customs..

after you successfully export the goods and the buyer has received and now paid $10m the $10m and other revenues you make will the taxed by the government at the end of your company's financial year before that $10m reaches your account the banks would take own fee and percentage for processing the transaction.

casualobserver:


Like I said you are ignorant and uninformed.

Who owns the $2b gained from tourism in your example? Is it the government that owns the hotels, the restaurants, the beaches the taxis they use? So if you do not tax the people that make money from tourists how does this $2b in tourism income translate to govt revenues besides visa fees?


As for your second paragraph, you are again displaying your ignorance. That $10m is my money not the government’s. Like I said the only thing the government can do is to mandate that I repatriate the money at the official exchange rate and that I keep the money in a domicialry account. It is not their money. At the end of the year I will file my accounts and I will pay taxes to the government IN NAIRA! NONE OF THAT $10m belongs to or goes to the government. . All I do is add to the supply of forex in the country but it is not governments money!!! It means that because I have brought back $10m to the country, when you need forex there is more forex in the system and the price comes down. Nothing to do with government revenues. The government does not see 1cent of the $10m.

We are talking about government revenues here not the economy. Like I said earlier do not comment on matters you do not understand.

codemaniacs:


In my previous comment I used 50million people but 70% of 200m is 140m people.

so if 140m people pay tax of at least $20 that is still $2.8billion and won't boost the budget by $100billion.

so you're wrong that taxes is the solution.

kukutenla already quoted you with the right question..

that $33b budget is what they are showing to the public. the real budget will be over $120b.

codemaniacs:


tourists pay VAT on products they buy, In some countries the govt also owns or has stake in hotels, restaurants and beaches.

Did I not say from the beginning that government’s make moment from taxes? Do they pay VAT in forex? Who owns the forex they bring in?

In Nigeria, the government owns schools, universities, hospitals, parks e.t.c.. when you patronize a government facility it is government you're paying.

You are clutching at straws.

you are displaying ignorance.. $10m is not your money after deductions and fees have been collected by banks and the government. when you pay tax at the end of the year the government takes another percentage of the $10m.

If $10m reaches your account the banks will inform the government.

Inform the government and take my money? I spend money on raw material to produce goods that I export and sell for $10m, my profit is $1m…even if it is $5m and the way you were brought up and your education is saying to you the govt owns the $10m I received in sales? What if I made a loss? Guy at this stage, I have to apologize, you are not ignorant and uninformed, you are daft! I warned you at the beginning g not to quote me with ignorance, now I say do not quote me with buffooonery. This thing is not just above your pay grade, it is clearly above your IQ

you're very ignorant...

pocom35:


You are the one that is helping them to steal..I guess that's why you can tell it's 70%

bayelsaowei:
that dashboard shows there is a direct relation between budgets and a country's productivity..

We are highly non productive reason why our budget is that small compared to our population... take a look at Algeria..

codemaniacs:


In my previous comment I used 50million people but 70% of 200m is 140m people.

so if 140m people pay tax of at least $20 that is still $2.8billion and won't boost the budget by $100billion.

so you're wrong that taxes is the solution.

kukutenla already quoted you with the right question..

that $33b budget is what they are showing to the public. the real budget will be over $120b.

nairalanda1:



Even then, old chaps, the 120bn is not enough for a country our size....which is what I have been trying to tell you guys on this site...APC, PDP, NNPP, LP, ETC supporters.

The fact is, Nigeria even at 120bn naira is still a poor broke oil nation. We should be, and this is why I consider most Nigerian leaders (Ironsi and Murtala were not in power long enough) to be awful. We should be earning something like 4 trillion DOLLARS at least, 10 trillion DOLALRS at most.

We got a lot of natural resources, a large GDP that is undertaxed, and a large industrial potential. We don't use it, instead we fritter around oil and pretend as if it is enough. It isn't. We can't even be like UAE or Saudi because our large population means that we got a poor revenue to gdp ratio

Then the corruption makes it damm worse. Really worse.

Even the budget APC called out today, 22 trillion. Our debt meanwhile is 50 trillion naira. Debt servicing is taking away 8 trillion of the budget this year, and the debt is still growing. States too all owe money. And we pretend we got enough money. .

That is the purpose of my economic comments on this site...to tell Nigerians that we have been doing things wrong for years, and we need to do what the big boys are doing...fighting corruption, paying more in tax, diversifying the economy, and earning more by exporting manufactured goods and servicies. That's what we got to do. And if we remove subsides on power and petrol (Tinubu has not removed subsides on petrol, despite what he and his supporters say).....we free up the sectors to power the possible industrial revolution.

The thing is, whether 33 bn or 120 billion, we are still broke. Call me when we have 4 trillion dollars at least (not naira), and an exporting industrial economy,and jailing people for steraling money that is when we are serious.

casualobserver:


Please don’t quote me to make ignorant uninformed comments. Tourism doesn’t bring money to any government. Tourism, exports, etc are just like any other industry. It is taxes on activities, employees etc that brings revenue. The income generated by the industry goes to the operators. If you don’t tax them you make nothing from it no matter how many foreigners come or how many goods you export. If I export $10m worth of goods, it is my money not the government’s. The most the government can do is say I repatriate my foreign income at the official rate and put in in a dom account. The money is not theirs!!! So how has my exporting $10m worth of good increased govt revenues? It is only when they tax me that they get revenue from my activities and even then, I will pay my taxes in Naira not in forex. The purpose of encouraging exports is to boost forex availability in the system, the money doesn’t belong to the government unless it is the government’s property that is being exported e.g oil or gas.

You are confusing forex with taxes…go and learn basic economics. Govt revenue is from taxes. Exchange rate is from demand and supply of forex. The only reason govt gets a lot of forex from Oil is because govt owns the oil. Will the government own the tourism or the export industries…so why will any forex generated belong to them? Forex inflows determine exchange rates, govt taxes determine govt revenues. Unless you are proposing that government owns businesses the tourism and export sectors.

Go and learn the difference between forex and government revenues or better still go and do a course in economics before commenting on matters above your pay grade.

codemaniacs:


Ironsi was in power long enough to cause 100year plus problems.

Nigeria and other black African countries can never make up to $4trillion dollars because of weak currencies and anti-Nigerian deals signed with colonial thieves..

Nigeria does not own a working refinery because that means the foreign refineries Nigeria patronizes will lose billions of $$ in revenue

nairalanda1:


Which were the result of attempting to solve issues that came from the whole first republic imbroglio, and then no matter what, Nzeogwu is to be ultimately blamed.



Which is an excuse by the way.

We are weak because we don't want to do the things like improve our tax regime, fight corruption and work hard to becoming a manufacturer of goods and servicies.

(Malaysia and Indonesia too are former colonies. Better than us, though not the best, because they did the hard work. China was once worse than Senegal).

The thing is, independence was sold on the idea that there would be more money for the black majority. Problem was, it was a lie. But the thing is doing the hard work china did and even many european countries did to get industrial was going to mean more suffering...so the alternative was mass 'socialist' welfare projects...which led to us getting into debt because trying to help too many people on limited money is a nice way of going broke.

Not jsut Nigeria...Venezuela and Argentina have the same issues.



Not true.

We don't have a refinery because since 1973, we have sold oil at a loss...and that means no profit...which promotes corruption, sabotage and stealing in the refineries, because free government money was still coming in whether the refineries worked or not.

Foreign investors would have loved it if Nigeria was not subsidising fuel at all...infact one of our early refineries was built with help from Shell. Back then we did not subsidise fuel.

Niger republic our neighbour has a working refinery as does chad. Both built with foreign investment from China, because in both countires, they sell fuel above the market price, and thus a profit is made, attracting investors.

No investor is going to come and build a refinery in Nigeria. Refine fuel above N900 AND sell it at N700 and below? Right.


Venezuela has been selling fuel for N40 for decades. In that time they lost refining capacity drastically. And the process started before their goverment became anti-American so don't blame them for that.

codemaniacs:


there was nothing to solve from the 1st republic. Ironsi, Azikiwe, Ojukwu and Nzeogwu were both corrupt and did not have any form of inteligence.

s N33trillion so imagine if the currency was still the way it was in the mid 1900s that N33trillion budget will be equal to $33trillion.
In the mid 1900s, Nigeria naira was between 1.25 to 3.25 naira to $1. it has nothing to do with improving tax regime. right now, Nigeria's budget i

Nigeria does not have a working refinery because Nigeria is led by "house n*ggas" and eu:ropean puppets and slaves.
Nigeria makes over $80billion from selling raw crude oil and can make over $150billion from selling refined crude oil.
a black majority country making over $150b is an abomination to whyte people who control world economics.

codemaniacs:






taxes is not where other countries get money.. other countries get money from tourism, exporting of aeroplanes, cars, trucks, food, oil e.t.c just like Nigeria is already doing.

Nigerians are already paying more than enough taxes..

If 50million people are employed and the minimum wage is 80,000 naira and are each paying taxes of 20,000 naira to the government.

that's 20,000 naira ( $20 ) x 50million people is equal to $1billion and if you add $1billion to the current it does not really do much.

so this proves that taxing the people is not the solution to increasing Nigeria's budget.

Elsueno:
To be honest, I still don't think we are even up to 150 million in this country...So many things just doesn't make sense with that 200 mil stuff

Kukutenla:

Your claim on tourism is wrong. US, UK, Israel, Saudi and other countries all over the world run and maintain tourism sites were they generate money. An easy example is pilgrimage to both Saudi and Israel. This religious tourism are run by the govt of both countries.
For export, just like Nigeria's oil, there are export activities that can also generate revenue for govt without necessarily being tax. An example happened during covid when US sold ventilators to some countries. So it's not strictly tax alone that give makes revenue off.