He made these remarks last Friday after GRA had announced it collected over D9 billion revenue in seven months this year. He disclosed that the country’s revenue body collected nearly D1.6 billion in a single month of July 2023.
In an interview with The Point, Mr. Darboe explained a wide range of reforms helped create the avenue for the Authority to collect “what it’s collecting today” in terms of revenue. These reforms, he disclosed, include a level of tax compliance from the business companies, particularly the telecom companies.
He also attributed it to the digitalisation reforms. Mr. Darboe emphasised that the digitalisation of “our operation in revenue collection is helping GRA to increase the revenue collection.”
Mr. Darboe described the transformation of GRA from analogue to digitalisation as long overdue as GRA is now recording high revenue performance on a monthly basis.
He said GRA embraced the paradigm shift to digitalisation reforms as a tool that would bear fruit in the collection of revenue.
The GRA boss also spoke on staff motivation, saying it’s among his top priority. “Capacity building of my staff is key in GRA strategic planning,” he said, while outlining the importance of education on tax through radios, newspapers, television and seminars.
Mr. Darboe further extolled GRA’s line ministry (Finance) for the support, which he said is very important towards the success of GRA.
CG Darboe believes that if the level of tax compliance continues to increase, GRA would undoubtedly achieve the revenue target for 2023.
Also speaking on the area of senior staff retirement at GRA, Mr. Darboe stated that “retirement is a fact of life, but in GRA we have what we called succession planning.”
“All the departments are following the successful planning. This is what helps to continue progressing despite some of our good staff gone on retirement.”
“For the future, as far as revenue collection is concerned, we are confident that we will do better due to our continued reforms on digitalisation,” he concluded.
