Tax officials learning to speak mandarin – Maputo

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Tax officials learning to speak mandarin – Maputo

2:20 CAT | 15 Jun 2018

O País

The Mozambican Tax Authority (AT) announced on Thursday that 80 tax officials have begun a course in Mandarin to allow them to communicate more readily with Chinese businesses operating in Mozambique.

The three month course is being given by the Confucius Institute at Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University, the body tasked with teaching Chinese culture and language. The tax officials concerned are involved in collecting Value Added Tax (VAT) from Chinese companies.

An AT press release announced that training in Mandarin will be extended to officials in other parts of the country in the near future.

At Wednesday’s ceremony opening the course, Venancio Francisco, the AT’s General Director of Common Services, said that, over the last three years, China has become the country with most investments approved in Mozambique, and the great expansion of Chinese business poses challenges to the tax and customs authorities, including in communication.

“The training of the tax inspection teams that is beginning today seeks to respond to this challenge”, said Francisco. “Its fundamental goal is to endow the participants with communication skills in order to improve the relationship between the tax administration and taxpayers of Chinese nationality”.

Francisco stressed that historically China has been a strategic partner of Mozambique, not only through the formal agreements on cooperation between the two countries, but also because China has made resources available to finance investment projects.

He said the AT is aware that human capital is the most important asset for the success of organisations – hence the AT prioritises the training of its staff in various fields of knowledge, in order to improve institutional efficiency and maximise tax collection.

The AT release added that representatives of the Confucius Institute said they are ready to do all in their power to ensure that the participants leave the course with basic knowledge of Mandarin, which will improve the efficiency of their inspection work and their ability to communicate with Chinese citizens.

Source: AIM