AS ZAMBIA’s quest for full middle income status gathers momentum, the government has the mammoth task of mobilising resources to finance various development programmes.
This means it has to generate more resources from local sources.
But this is by no means an easy task as Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) commissioner general Berlin Msiska can attest.
Dr Msiska presides over the institution mandated to collect revenue in form of taxes from all eligible taxpayers to fund the national budget.
He therefore must be fully aware of the challenges involved in collecting enough revenue to keep the wheels of government running.
As the chief taxman his duty is to ensure that there is a steady flow of revenue into the national treasury for the Ministry of Finance to channel to needy sectors.
Mr Msiska is therefore Minister of Finance Alexander Chikwanda’s right handman.
Mr Chikwanda’s capacity to fund ministries, and grant-aided institutions, and service local and foreign debt, depends on the success of ZRA in meeting its revenue collection targets.
On the other hand, Mr Msiska needs an enabling policy and legal framework to increase ZRA’s collection and monitoring capacity.
As he has noted, the steady economic growth Zambia has been recording in the last few years has created a demand for increased resources for the implementation of programmes in various sectors.
But we would be retarding our country’s development if we depended on external aid, which often comes with visible and invisible strings.
It is in this light Mr Msiska has called for an increase in the income raised from taxes and other domestic sources.
He said in a story carried in yesterday’s edition of our sister publication, the Sunday Mail, that increased locally raised revenue will give Government enough fiscal space in setting priorities.
“Our country is currently experiencing six percent growth per annum. In the light of this growth, more focus should be placed on domestic revenue as the principal source of fiscal space expansion, given its sustainability, thereby reducing dependence on donor funding,” Mr Msiska said.
He was speaking at a function organised by the Zambia Institute of Chartered Accountants (ZICA) in Lusaka on Friday.
Mr Msiska reminded Zambians that countries that cannot fund themselves or repay their debts are at the mercy of donors, creditors and international agencies with their own agenda and self-interest.
How right? We have seen how powerful countries have been using money to impose alien and anti-human values on recipient countries under the guise of human rights.
Western countries have not hesitated to threaten to withdraw aid from countries with laws that criminalise homosexuality.
Fortunately, while spineless governments have succumbed to the pressure to repeal such laws or give promoters of gay rights wider space, a good number of them have stood their ground to defend the moral values of their countries.
Zambia has had its own share of such machinations, although it has weathered the storms thus far.
There is no honour in depending on foreign funding for locally-crafted development programmes.
The donor can plug the cash tap and put paid to all the country’s development efforts no matter how progressive they may be.
It is for this reason that we support Mr Msiska’s call for increased efforts aimed at increasing domestic tax and non-tax revenue.
Already the government has made significant strides through the signing and enforcement of various legal instruments including statutory instrument 55, which is aimed at arresting capital flight through the monitoring of foreign exchange transactions.
Another landmark reform is the banning of the use of foreign currency in local transactions.
These measures deserve full support.
ZRA should work with other government institutions to increase and strengthen revenue collection.
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