By TEDDY KUYELA
Over K90 million in duty was not collected by the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) from imported goods at nine port offices as of December last year.
The latest Auditor General’s (AG) report reveals that the ZRA did not collect over K90,544,967 from the goods that entered Zambia despite the records indicating that all the goods were cleared by the destination exit office.
The ZRA automated system for customs data has a transit module that handles transactions for Removals in Bond (RIBs) and Removals in Transit (RITs) such as goods moving from one customs control area to another without duty being paid but under surety of a bond issued by banks or insurance companies.
But according to the customs procedure, transit documents are generated at the port of entry and are acquitted at the port of exit as goods are leaving the country within five days for RITs and 30 days for RIBs.
Therefore, clearance of transits on the system is done by the destination exit office but after checking that all the goods that entered the country were not consumed within the country, the examination record revealed that duty amounting to over K90,544,967 was not collected as of December last year.
The nine port offices are Kasumbalesa, Ndola, Nakonde, Mwami, Livingstone, Chirundu, Katima-Mulilo, Kazungula and Victoria Falls.
The report has also revealed that ZRA was owed K2,532,212 by Ndola Lime Company in mineral royalty taxes as of December last year.
A review of the 2012 customs debt stock also states that K116,446,431 was owed to ZRA as of December last year.
Various goods with value for duty purpose worth K1,149,049 that were placed on receipts of items held from February 20 to September 2012 were missing from the state warehouse in Nakonde.
The report also reveals that 10 seized vehicles with an estimated duty of K122,187,223 went missing from the customs yard and management failed to provide acquittal details for the vehicles.
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