The 9th National Assembly in its first year of legislative session, made required interventions on the nation’s economy resulting into new windows of revenues estimated by experts to be about N320 billion per year.
The federal lawmakers are also ready to give the much expected Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) expeditious consideration anytime forwarded to them by the executive arm of government.
Affirmations to these were made by the chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Surajudeen Ajibola Basiru (APC, Osun Central) in a statement issued in Abuja Friday.
Basiru in the statement titled, “The 9th Senate and the one year after,” said in the area of legislative interventions for good governance, the Senate and by extension, the National Assembly, had enacted new laws and /or modifying existing legislations for the attainment of good governance.
According to him, one of such interventions was the amendment of Finance Act 2019.
“Perturbed by dwindling national revenues largely due to vulnerabilities in international price of crude oil, it took steps towards improving revenues from other avenues notably Value Added Tax (VAT).
“Accordingly, it passed an Executive Bill which proposed an increase in VAT from 5% to 7.5% in record time by invoking its powers under Order 79(1) of the Senate Standing Rules. This was an extraordinary step to take.
“Another laudable and progressive intervention was the extensive work done on the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract (Amendment) Act 2019 (Act) to repeal and replace Section 16 of the Act.
“The cumulative effect of this amendment is that the sum of N320 billion has been unlocked according to several reputable industry experts and it goes without saying that the injection of such huge revenue into our economy will catalyse several positive outcomes.”
