Nigeria is to raise value-added tax (VAT) from five per cent to 7.5 per cent in 2020, as Africa’s biggest oil producer seeks to shore up falling revenue, former Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, has disclosed.

She made the disclosure yesterday at the Bloomberg Emerging and Frontier Forum in London, recalling that her main preoccupation while in office was how to raise government revenue with only 55 per cent of the targets met.

“We have developed a strategic revenue growth initiative, which we have started to implement,” Ahmed said.

“Our target is to increase revenue to 65 per cent minimum in 2019 so that in the next three years, we are able to attain 80-85 per cent of our revenue target,” she added.
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