ZRA: 2016 Has Been a Tough Year

ZAMBIA Revenue Authority commissioner general Kingsley Chanda says over 70, 000 vehicles were smuggled into the country this year.
And Chanda says 2016 has been a very tough year for the ZRA because most of the country’s economic fundamentals went off the rails.
Chanda said as at December 9, about 381,723 vehicles were registered with the Road Transport and Safety Agency but that only 308,881 had their records matching with those at the ZRA.
“I would like to specifically address you on the issue of the amnesty that we gave on motor vehicles. After realising that there were a number of vehicles on our roads that were not properly cleared with customs, we decided to give an amnesty [and] this amnesty, as you are fully aware, was specific to penalties and interest. We did encourage, as you are aware, motorists and organisations with suspicious vehicles to step forward,” Chanda said.
“As a matter of public interest, there have been preliminary reconciliations of RTSA and ZRA databases and identification of wanted vehicles as end of 9th December, 2016. This reconciliation has indicated that there are 381,723 vehicles that were registered with RTSA. Out of which 308,881, representing 80 per cent, had matching records with ZRA, meaning that these vehicles were properly cleared with ZRA. Unfortunately, about 20 per cent of these vehicles, specifically 72,842, have not been cleared with customs, meaning they have been smuggled.”
And Chanda noted that 2016 has been a very challenging year for the authority for various reasons, including changes in the macro-economic environment.
“We had certain projections in terms of how our exchange rate will be, we had projections on how the GDP will be, we had projections regarding the price of copper and all these economic parameters went off the rails to an extent where the sudden increase in the exchange rate made imports expensive for the locals and we had lower than projects imports,” Chanda explained.
He further said the mid-year revision of mineral royalty tax from 20 per cent to six per cent had a serious knock on the authority’s capacity to deliver revenues.
On how far the ZRA had gone in VAT refunds to mines, Chanda said: “We have been liquidating it [and] our strategy has been to pay VAT refunds while liquidating the arrears for all mining companies [but] for cash flow purposes, we can’t pay everything at once. By the way, this is money that has been withheld since 2014 and so, to come and pay it out at once in 2016, is a bit of a challenge.”