Enugu State Government says that its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) has risen from N450 million to N700 million monthly due to improved collection system.

The Commissioner for Finance and Economic Development, Mrs Eucharia Uche-Offor, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Enugu.

Uche-Offor said that the increase in the IGR receipt manifested since the inception of Gov. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi’s administration.

Yes, there is an improvement in our IGR since His Excellency the Executive Governor is a finance man (with financial academic background) too.

“We have really improved on our IGR since the assumption of office of this present, current government.

“On assumption of office (one year ago), our IGR has nose-dived to about N450 million; however this administration has grown it to over N700 million monthly.

“And efforts are still on to surpass this achievement.

“Yes, the state has enough hands in the IGR departments to deploy a lot of people to improve on this IGR.

“What we are currently doing is to train them on the current revenue collection method.”

The commissioner said that the state had introduced some financial measures to check leakage of revenue and bloated government spending.

She said that the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), streamlined IGR collection, payment of workers’ salaries through Bank Verification Number (BVN) as well as the ongoing bio-metric capturing of the state work force would enhance financial discipline and savings in the state.

“Well, these ghost workers have been there; but now when this administration took over it noticed huge wage bill, which cannot be supported by this dwindling revenue from the federation account.

“So, consequently, Enugu State decided to embark on bio-metric capture and anchored it on BVN in line with the decision taken at the Federation Account Committee (FAAC) meeting in Abuja, which I attended, whereby states were encouraged to key into the use of TSA and BVN- based verification of all workers, including pensioners.

“As we speak, the exercise is progressing smoothly in Enugu State.

“It is expected that some savings would be made after the exercise.’’

NAN recalls that the state government had earlier announced that it had saved over N1 billion by the deployment of TSA financial system in the state. (NAN)

•Photo shows Enugu Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi.