Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) Commissioner General John S Bizwick says he is confident the MRA will meet the K1.1 trillion revenue collection target for the 2020/21 budget.
Bizwick said this on Monday when MRA staff met parliamentary committee members on Budget and Finance as well as the Public Accounts Committee.
He said MRA has been allocated K37 billion and the amount is up by 9 percent when compared to the K34 billion allocated last year.
According to Bizwick, the funds will help MRA in its operations to meet the K1.1 trillion target.
“I am a positive person and I am passionate about my work. I think all the staff at MRA are with me and so we will be able to achieve that I have no doubt to that, as MRA we will collect that amount,” said Bizwick.
During the meeting, the MRA boss expressed concern over the delay to procure drones from South Africa. He said the drones will be used in all borders to help reduce cases of smuggling.
“So smugglers do use such various roots. So what we are saying is that we should be able to know which road they use to pass so the drones will help us a lot on that,” said Bizwick.
In her remarks, Chairperson of Budget and Finance Gladys Ganda said they had a meeting with MRA where they wanted to hear from MRA if the money allocated authority is enough to meet all the expenses.
“It was clear that there was a shortfall and the shortfall was about 5 billion so we did indicate that they have to go back and borrow that money and we did ask them to go back and give us details on what they are going to do with that money so all in all MRA has been given 37 billion which is up by 9 percent,” said Ganda.
On the target that MRA has been given to meet, Ganda said as a committee they are not really sure if MRA will meet the target due to the Covid-19.
“As we speak the growth rate is forecast at 1.9 percent this year and probably 5 percent next year. And if you see the trend from 2014 up to now you see that the revenue collections target is being reduced and they are not meeting the target so looking at that trend analysis you can see that they may not be able to achieve the target but they have told us that they are going to meet the target.
“We are going to monitor them because at the end of the day if government is going to achieve anything, it must start from achieving the revenue generation so we hope MRA will meet that target,” said Ganda.
