Mozambican Tax Authority Nearing Target for the Year

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Mozambican Tax Authority Nearing Target for the Year

9:44 CAT | 03 Dec 2015

In file Club of Mozambique. / Amelia Nakhare

The Mozambican Tax Authority (AT) announced on Tuesday that, between 1 January and 27 November, tax collection reached 85.88 per cent of the target for the year – which is 160.7 billion meticais (about US$3.06 billion, at current exchange rates).

Speaking at a Maputo press conference, the head of the AT communication and image division, Haydn David, said he was confident that by the end of the year the full target will have been met.

“The Tax Authority, as always, is trying to comply with its mission of collecting revenue”, he said, “and we hope that, by the end of the year, we shall succeed in meeting the targets. We are designing strategies for revenue collection, and we are working to combat smuggling and tax evasion”.

The number of registered taxpayers has grown more than expected. In the first 11 months of the year, the AT issued 798,820 tax identification numbers (NUITs) which was 132 per cent of the annual target.

David also announced a major seizure of smuggled cloth in the northern port of Nacala. The customs service seized a container with 405 bundles inside, each of which held 35 rolls of cloth. This merchandise, he said, was being slipped out of the port by making illicit use of the prerogatives of the Nacala Special Economic Zone. The customs duties owing on the cloth, he added, are over 1.8 million meticais (about US$35,000).

As for the 20 trucks held up last weekend at Ressano Garcia, on the border with South Africa, and belonging to the Cooperative of Micro-Importers of Mozambique, David said customs had found undeclared merchandise in the truck, discrepancies in the quantities declared, and anomalies in the certificates of origin.

The importers told the independent television station STV that they were carrying South African potatoes and onions, with all the correct documentation, and that the real reason why their produce was being held was because they refused to pay bribes to customs officials.

David denied this, and claimed “this agitation was provoked by some importers who were not pleased with the customs administration’s activity in checking their merchandise and its documentation”.

Source: AIM News