Dar es Salaam. Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) has denied reports that it has stopped publishing monthly revenue statistics after collection dropped sharply.
Revenue
statistics were last updated for June, prompting speculation that
monthly collection, which was consistently above Sh1 trillion since
early 2016, had crashed.
TRA said everything was on right track, adding that it would announce the latest figures any time this week.
Kigoma
Urban MP Zitto Kabwe said on his Facebook page on Saturday that less
than Sh600 billion was collected in July and August even as the public
servants’ wage bill stood at Sh570 billion per month. He blamed the drop
in domestic revenue on a tough business environment in the country and
“massive” layoffs.
“We have of late witnessed companies
retrenching workers and others closing down. The government itself
slashed the number of public servants, saying it was getting rid of
ghost workers and employees possessing fake certificates. This affected
income tax, especially Pay As You Earn (PAYE) which contributed Sh3
trillion to government coffers in 2016/17,” Mr Kabwe said.
“The
government must review the way it operates to create conducive
environment for business and investment. Otherwise it will be forced to
borrow to pay its workers.”
However, TRA director for
taxpayer services and education Richard Kayombo refuted claims that the
agency had stopped publishing monthly collection figures because
collection was now embarrassingly low. He said TRA normally published
the results on a quarterly basis, and not every month as claimed.
“The
public should be patient as we will be publish our statistics before
the end of this week,” Mr Kayombo said, adding that data was normally
released from the 10th of the month following the end of a quarterly
period.
TRA last released an update in July when it
announced that Sh14.4 trillion was collected July 2016 and June 2017
against its target of Sh15.1 trillion. TRA’s target for this financial
year is Sh17.1 trillion. Collection for June was Sh1.39 trillion,
according to TRA statistics.
Prof Haji Semboja of the
University of Dar es Salaam said he could not trust Mr Kabwe’s
statistics because they were not official but mere speculation. He said
that the current global trend showed that economic activities had
stagnated and Tanzania was no exception.
“We are
currently experiencing income and wealth constraints...a lot of economic
activities have been affected,” Prof Semboja said.
In
view of this, he added, government institutions should recognise the
importance of sharing their findings, whether bad or good, with the
public so that solutions could be sought for the good of the country.
Prof Semboja also expressed his surprise at TRA’s assertion that it had been issuing its reports on a quarterly basis.
“I was reading them every month until TRA suddenly stopped issuing them a few months ago,” he said.
When
the current government started taking measures to mop out excessive
liquidity, cub tax evasions and control government expenditure, some
businesses were shaken and other employers start to cut their workforces
in response to the biting economic situation.
For
instance, the changing business and economic environment forced low-cost
airline Fastjet to review its operations and layoff 41 workers last
year.
In November 2016, Sao Hill Industries also
announced it was cutting hundreds of jobs after recording a Sh8 billion
loss during the previous year.
The firm also said it
was closing down the Lindi Forestry subsidiary and moves its
headquarters from London to Dar es Salaam as part of a survival
strategy.
In January this year, at least the three
major mobile phone firms announced that they would retrench several of
their employees as they aligned their operations with a directive to
float 25 per cent of their shares to the public through Initial Public
Offerings (IPOs)
Tanzania Distilleries Limited (TDL)– a
subsidiary of Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL) Group– joined into a
list of companies that were laying off staff to mitigate the impact of a
changing business environment in March with reports indicating that
even its parent firm retrenched some workers.
Treading
in the same space as TDL, a city investor decided to put up for sale his
six-month old $20 million (Sh45 billion) investment for production of
spirits earlier this month.
Recently, Bulyanhulu Gold
Mine which is owned by Acacia Mining cut 1,200 direct jobs and 800
indirect jobs that are said giving the commercial banks hard times to
collect about Sh30 billion the sacked employees borrowed.
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