AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE parliamentary Budget Committee has hailed the ongoing implementation of the Electronic Tax Stamps (ETS), after receiving the latter’s progress report that was presented before Members of Parliament (MPs) in Dodoma yesterday.
The Committee Chairman, Mashimba Ndaki, hailed the Swiss company—SICPA, which was awarded a tender by Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) to provide software and hardware for the project.
However, some MPs including Kigoma South MP, Hasna Mwilima asked SICPA to fast track its technology to ensure that people who could not afford to purchase smart phones were equally capable of receiving information on the stamps.
Bariadi East MP, Andrew Chenge and his Manyovu counterpart, Albert Obama, wanted to know the best practice in other countries on the system, after a presentation from SICPA, although, they said the system was the best in ensuring that there was no revenue loss in the country.
According to SICPA’s General Manager in Tanzania, Xavier Davard, the first phase of ETS was rolled out in January last year while the second phase kicked off in August.
So far according to him, the project had facilitated employment opportunities to 172 people; Out of which 171 were Tanzanians in the system which has currently 203 taxpayers.
“On Training, we have so far trained 437 TRA employees as well as 289 tax payers and our major target is to protect the local economy,” he insisted, adding that the training sessions would continue after the end of Covid-19 outbreak in the country.
Presenting the government’s development plan and budget framework estimates for fiscal year 2020/2021 recently, the Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango said the country had witnessed a considerable rise in revenues during the first seven months of the 2019/2020.
The former World Bank economist who yesterday presented his report on ETS implementation before the budget committee noted however that there was a need to sustain the achievements recorded in revenue collections through ETS and electronic fiscal devices (EFDs).
