ZRA Board Chairperson Dr Caleb Fundanga says although the authority has been meeting its revenue collection targets, it would have been collecting more funds had it not been for the continued smuggling of goods.
Dr Fundanga has also emphasised the need for the country to invest in solar energy, saying load shedding will make the festive season “gloomy”.
In an interview, Dr Fundanga said curbing the increased cases of smuggling could lead to increased revenue collections.
“Tax compliance, we are achieving certain targets very well. I think the revenue administration does bring out numbers, very regularly just to keep the nation informed on how we are progressing. I think we should be on course but even as I am seeing that, there is still a lot of smuggling which if it was scourged, it could lead to increased revenues. There are cases for instance in the case of liquor, cigarettes and so forth, at one time I was talking to someone who said I have even stopped importing liquor because the smuggled stuff is giving us [a] much lower price. Now obviously this is not good for our country, we have opened borders all over, and I don’t know what we need to do, do we need to build a wall around Zambia’s borders to curb this? I don’t know,” he said.
“These criminal activities are being committed by Zambians obviously. One can only appeal to patriotism that revenues being lost are revenues which could go towards beefing up supply of drugs, they can go towards improving supplies of our schools, building more schools and a lot of other good things. If we allow this to continue, it will be bad. Even when you look at things like salaula, a lot of salaula is coming here sometimes being declared as in transit. When it crosses the border, it is offloaded. Should we be doing these things honestly? Where are we going to get funding to improve our prosperity? These are the challenges, so even if the collections might match the targets, potentially we should be collecting more”.
And Dr Fundanga said the authority needed to be vigilant to ensure that once tax concessions were given to some investors, proposed investments were made as quickly as possible.
“There is also a lot of money that goes out to attract investors. Sometimes to do that, we have to give various tax concessions. But you are looking at the future, if you are looking at investors, there will be nothing in the future. We need concessions in order to grow our economy, let more investment come in, to create more jobs and so forth. I think all the countries do that. But we just have to make sure that once concessions are given, the proposed investments are made as quickly as possible so that we can start benefiting from them. So we must also be vigilant to ensure that once we have given a concession, the proposed investment is made as quickly as possible so that the jobs are created,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr Fundanga emphasised the need for the country to invest in solar energy.
“Electricity…we are ending on a very sad note. This loading is not something which we should have expected. It is going to make our festive season a little gloomier than would have been the case if we had electricity. Again I have been listening to the radio where small-scale entrepreneurs are complaining that six hours per day is just too much, even two hours could have been better. Their complaints are justified. If there is no electricity, there is very little that can happen. I can say power security only comes from investing in alternative energy sources. I think more solar power will be more reassuring. There should be a national effort to talk about this, let us see the effort to go solar be implemented vigorously. Even budget allocations towards transition to solar are being done. This is in line even with global climate change agenda,” said Dr Fundanga.
