FG Inaugurates Committee to Draft 2027 Finance Bill, Gives Six Weeks
By Aboki Forex —
The federal government has inaugurated a subcommittee to review fiscal and tax policies and draft a Finance Bill to accompany the 2027 budget. The Subcommittee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms was set up in Abuja by Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Taiwo Oyedele, who gave members six weeks to complete their review and submit recommendations.
The committee is chaired by Permanent Secretary Raymond Omachi, with Albert Folorunsho as Co-Chair. The Finance Bill is the legislation that usually accompanies the annual budget and sets out the legal basis for the government's tax and fiscal measures for the year ahead.
Oyedele: Do Not Rewrite the 2025 Reforms
Oyedele told the subcommittee that the 2027 Finance Bill must go beyond a routine legislative exercise. He said the committee's job is to build on the 2025 reforms, not overhaul them, and to draw lessons from how those reforms have played out in practice.
"The Finance Bill 2027 should not be seen as just another annual legislative exercise. Our task is not to rewrite the 2025 reforms, but to preserve their fundamental principles while learning from implementation and responding to new economic realities," he said.
The minister directed members to examine areas where current rules have created confusion, produced unintended outcomes, or placed unnecessary burdens on those trying to comply. He also asked them to identify ways to make Nigeria more attractive to investors and more productive overall.
Over 134 Memoranda Submitted
Oyedele said the government's public call for input had already generated more than 134 online memoranda, alongside a number of hard-copy submissions. Contributors include businesses, investors, professional bodies, civil society organisations, academics and individual citizens.
He said the volume of responses showed how much Nigerians and other stakeholders care about having a say in how fiscal policy is shaped. The minister described the inauguration as a signal that Nigeria's tax reform process had moved from a phase of sweeping change to one of ongoing refinement.
"No serious reform ends with the enactment of legislation. Good reform is a process, not an event," Oyedele said.
He added that the real test of any reform lies in how it works in practice: how businesses interpret the rules, how administrators apply them, how investors react, and how ordinary citizens experience the outcomes.
VAT Collections Rose to N2.42 Trillion
The push for fresh fiscal ideas comes as tax revenue continues to climb. The National Bureau of Statistics reported that Value Added Tax revenue rose to N2.42 trillion in the first quarter of 2026, a 9.98% increase from the N2.20 trillion recorded in Q4 2025.
The bureau's latest Sectoral Distribution of VAT report, released on June 11, 2026, showed total VAT collections in Q1 2026 stood at N2.42 trillion, driven by contributions from local, foreign and import-related payments.
For businesses, the six-week deadline means the shape of the next Finance Bill will be settled well before the 2027 budget is presented. Early clarity on compliance rules and investor incentives could matter as much as the tax rates themselves, given that implementation gaps, not policy intent, have been the recurring complaint from the private sector.