Expert Advices FG On How To Generate More Revenue From Vehicles’ License Renewals

The National Director of Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, (CILT), Mr. Paul Ndibe, has advised the federal government to consider adding a particular sum of money to the amount payable by vehicle owners for the renewal of their licenses annually to enable them fund the development of road infrastructure.
Mr. Ndibe gave this advice recently in Lagos while reacting to the recent suspension of the debate on the bill on the floor of the National Assembly seeking to establish petrol tax to fund road  maintenance, even as he pointed out that anything that would touch on the price of petroleum products would spark-off confusion.
He maintained that the government need to carry out further consultations and allow the price of petroleum products to flow on its own, saying that government can achieve that through renewal of license by motorists, that way, it could be sure of capturing every vehicle that is on the road.
According to him, “Government can decide in one way or the other, they have removed the toll gates and they cannot necessarily re-introduce the toll gates but even through the licensing of vehicles, renewal of licenses of vehicles you add a particular sum of money to that, then at this point, you are sure you are capturing every vehicle that is on the road. That can be more meaningful. But once you touch anything on petroleum, you will annoy a lot of people. So, my thinking is that the issue of petroleum pricing should be allowed to float on its own, then if you want to capture, because if a vehicle is road worthy, it is only then that it is on the road. It is not an amount of money you are looking at generating immediately; it is something that will overtime increment. And the money can be used for road infrastructure”.
He maintained that there would be no need to enact a bill to get the issue of road infrastructure addressed. According to him, the bill alone may not be able to address it.
“What will address the problem is a political will. That political will can also be executed through the Federal Ministry of Works. Road expansion, road building and all that are essentially issues around the purview of the Federal Ministry of Works. Having a bill is to support the initiative but if you have the bill and you don’t have the funding to execute what the bill has provided, you may still not have made any progress. So, the ideal thing is to find a way to have some political will and having the transportation infrastructure as key driver of the economy”.
 He advised the federal government to look at the transportation and logistics sector being the catalyst for growth.
 “If the government picks up transportation infrastructure as key to drive the economy and then the issue of inter connectivity of modes, the issue of bill to support that will not be. So, my thinking is that, first of all, the federal government should look at the logistics and transport as being the catalyst for growth. If they see it as that and know the contributions of the sector to the GDP and make a political commitment to that and follow it up, we don’t require any bill to support that”, he said.
Mr Ndibe therefore counseled the federal government on the need to know the importance of logistics and transport to the growth of the economy and to devote a consistent sum of money to the sector as well as come up with a development plan for the sector so that the plan is gradually rolled out and marched by funding commitment and execution.