By: Aruna Kamara (BO)
The Director General of the National Revenue Authority(NRA), Dr. Samuel Jibao has disclosed that they are determined to collect revenue to the tune of Le 9.3 trillion, which is over two trillion Leones target set for this year.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a four day Annual NRA Board and Management Retreat 2022 on the theme: Building NRA’s Infrastructure to enhance Revenue Collection held at the Galliness Paradise in Bo City yesterday, Dr. Jibao said that they are in Bo for the statutory mandate in that one month before the end of the year they engage on activities and explain what their targets and how resources were spent.
He said that it is during their engagement they present their 2023 activities plus the next year’s budget and they expect the Board to meet at the end of the retreat with a lot of information to approve the budget.
According to him, nobody will be happy when targets are not met but targets are set based on the assumption that it is the Ministry of Finance, Parliament and the donors that specify the target, considering the Global economic trend.
“This year our target for revenue generation was 7.4 trillion and so far up to September, we were expecting Le 5.4 trillion but collected 5.1 trillion, meaning we missed the target by 5.5%,” Dr. Jibao said, adding that “from this money, timber export was expected to have generated two hundred billion Leones. Still, there was no timber export and the Government had to subsidize petroleum products we were expecting revenue from there too. The government had to take away from excise component to cushion the Global shocks.”
He said that “our targets for next year is about Le 9.3 trillion, which is two trillion over what we are expecting this year, adding that” what we are now doing is to build a lot of systems to enable resilience as some of the Global shocks like the Ukraine-Russia War came when we were not expecting as we had navigated our way from COVID 19.”
Dr. Jibao said that “in 2021 we were able to end up with 15.7% GDP and that they are very optimistic that this year they will go beyond that, pointing out that they have gone digital with tax systems well automated.”
In his Keynote address, the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary School Education who is also in Charge of the Director of Science, Technology and Innovation(DSTI), Dr. Moinina Sengeh said that NRA is one of the progressive agencies since DSTI was set up.
He said that they have been working with them to understand their systems and NRA has promoted digitalization as they have introduced a digital tax system; electronic cash transfer.
Dr. Sengeh added that they have NRA has the right energy and attitude and will continue working with the Staff to implement the solution NRA desires to enhance effective revenue generation as they set targets for revenue generation in the country, which is critical for the development of the country, with Education Ministry in need money to be invested in the education and other sectors of development.
Meaningful statements were made by the Board representative, Mrs. Tuma Gento Kamara, Chairman of the Public Service Commission, K.O Bah and the opening ceremony was chaired by J. W Scot-manga, in charge of the Communication Unit of NRA.