Dr. Samuel Jibao, the new Commissioner General of the National Revenue Authority has within the first one hundred days undertaken massive reforms at the Authority.
Despite increasing revenue collection from Le 807 billion in the first quarter of 2018 to Le 1.07 trillion in the 2nd quarter he has undertaken key administrative reforms towards improving Organizational management, Operational management and relationship management.
In addressing the poor management style of exclusion which had characterized the Haja Kallah regime, Dr. Jibao has instituted an inclusive management style ensuring that managers both at the senior and middle levels are empowered to manage and account for their actions.
The new Commissioner General has also inherited what he referred to as a couple of ad-hoc and uncoordinated projects at the Authority such as upgrade of ASYCUDA++ to ASYCUDA world ,Revenue Receipting and Reconciliation ,Electronic cash Register etc.This state of affairs had undermined effective implementation and monitoring of projects at the Authority.
Another major reform at the Authority was the reviewing and aligning of all projects to the overall strategic plan of the Authority since donor projects were poorly coordinated and most of them were overlapping.
Most importantly also is the area of low tax payers compliance rate in the country which stands at 40 %.This was manifested in the accumulation of arrears and under–declaration of taxable incomes.In Addressing these anomalies the new Director General has embarked on aggressive debt collection and enforcement of tax laws in a fair and transparent manner. Businesses such as timber exports ,quarry mining have now been brought into the tax net.
Other reforms at the Authority also included staff rotation policy, addressing the terrible taxpayer data issue which has plagued the NRA for the past ten years,dealing with the question of integrity and relationship management with key institutions like the Ministry of Finance.
The inherent lack of trust between key institutions had resulted to lack of information sharing between the key ministries and this greatly affected tax policy formulation and administration.
It is the intention of the New Direction to move domestic revenue mobilization from a low 11.1 % of the GDP in 2017 to 20% of GDP in the next five years.
Many believe these robust revenue generation measures coupled up with fiscal discipline will lead to the attainment of these dreams.