The government of South Sudan through its National Revenue authority (NRA) has partnered with Uganda Revenue Authority to weed out smuggling and dumping.
The Commissioner General of South Sudan Revenue Authority (SSRA) Africano Mande paid a visit to URA Commissioner General John Musinguzi to discuss his country’s plans to apply new cargo monitoring system.
Commissioner Mande announced the collaboration between SSRA and INVESCO, Ugandan company that will provide cargo-tracking technology.
“Collections from customs have been low, pushing us to make tough decisions to improve. Invesco’s services will help us improve collections and even exceed our targets’ Commissioner Mande said.
He further said that SSRA hope to learn from URA.
The Democratic Republic of Congo signed Invesco in 2021 when its revenue collections at border points were low. DRC was collecting $9 million per month but as per statistic from the revenue body in DRC, it is estimated that they collect approximately, $220 million per month as compared to $9 which represents 600% growth in revenue collection.
Previous efforts by South Sudan government and Revenue Authority to curb this revenue loss has failed through a company called K-Polygon and hence, they reverted to URA and Invesco to give them a solution like they did in Congo and this should help raise revenue for both URA and South Sudan Revenue Authority(SSRA) in a bid to raise revenue and help curb smuggling and dumping.
Uganda has been losing a lot of revenue on dumping which also causes inflation in the economy.
This will also reduce the VAT refund racket where people claimed to heading to South Sudan and leave goods on the market while claiming for VAT refund from URA. It is estimated that Uganda has been losing about Shs10 billion a day while South Sudan could have lost more.
