Following the decision of the government to lift Nigerians out of poverty, each minister/each ministry has key performing indicators (KPIs) that it must meet, which include making sure that Nigeria invest more in education and health, and also making sure that the country creates the enabling and appropriate environment for especially small businesses to grow.
Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, Honourable Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, speaking on the abysmal human capital development in the country, said: “Nigeria has very low human capital development index and President Buhari had directed that we must work collectively, work together to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty. So, each minister/each ministry has the key performing indicators (KPIs) that it must meet, which include that we must invest more in education and health and make sure that we create the enabling and appropriate environment for especially small businesses to grow.”
On the role of her ministry, she also said “we sought to achieve that through the instrumentality of making some improvement in the tax law. Therefore, with the Finance Act 2019, we have made provisions to zero the tax for small enterprises, such that those that have a turnover of less than N25 million will not pay company income tax (CIT). Those with a turnover of between N25 million-N100 million will pay a reduced tax of 20 percent instead of 30 percent. So the tax is reduced.”
“The concept, for us, is for businesses to grow so that we will end up having more people employed and in this process lift people out of poverty. So, every ministry has specific task and policies that it is pursuing to lift the people out of poverty,” she said further.
