ZRA, BoZ confer to seal tax leakages through electronic system

Sat, 21 Jan 2017 14:06:59 +0000

By BUUMBA CHIMBULU

THE Central Bank is collaborating with the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) to improve the electronic ways of collecting revenue in a bid to seal leakages in the tax collection process.

Central Bank governor Denny Kalyalya said the Domestic Resource Mobilisation (DRM) system had leakages which needed to be sealed.

He was speaking when he appeared before the budget parliamentary committee in Lusaka.

Dr. Kalyalya said the electronic system would remove the leakages which happened when there was manual intervention.

“This will remove some of the arbitrage which goes on which happens when there are manual interventions, the system gets manipulated. We have a lot of leakages in our system which we must try to seal.

“There will be obviously
attempts to mess around with the electronic system but it leaves trails for audit process, so this is a way for the future,” he said.

Dr. Kalyalya explained that such leakages had resulted in Zambia having 17 percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) revenue ratio which was very low for a country which wanted to develop.

He further explained that Zambia was initially supposed to have around 20 percent of the GDP revenue ratio.

Dr. Kalyalya said raising the GDP revenue ratio remained a challenge which could be dealt with by broadening the tax base.

“We hope that some of the reforms that are under way will be implemented so that we can raise that. Zambia is not poor, we may have challenges but as a country, the resource base is huge,” he said.