“We recently went for a study tour in Uganda and Ghana. We were there to engage a company called Shepard that exercises stamps in a factory. Now that we have a lot of factories in The Gambia who pay excise tax based on their production, but it’s ordinarily very difficult for us to get the right statistics from them. Now, this company that we are trying to work with will bring its equipment and fix them in the factories to ensure that every bottle or bag that is produced is marked and sent to a server that is handle by the GRA and at the end of the day we will use that data to do our taxing to ensure the factories pay correct taxes.”
“We want to achieve this before the end of 2023. We also visited the fuel importation channel in Uganda to see how they do their marking before it reaches the OMCs.”
Commissioner General Yankuba Darboe told journalists that the Authority is committed to ensuring that all its systems are digitalised to avoid leakages and ensure more transparency.
He commended the taxpayers for being cooperative and tax compliant and urged those who are still reluctant to pay taxes to turn a new page in 2023 for the interest of the country.
CG Darboe recalled that despite all the global economic challenges, the Authority was able to collect over D12.7 billion. He thus commended his staff for their understanding and the government for maintaining peace and stability in the country.
“We also urge all Gambians to remain vigilant and safeguard the country’s peace and stability,” he advised.
“ECOWAS has supported us with another system called Sigma, a software interface with the Asycuda World; and it’s mainly to monitor the transit of goods within the subregion. They have already done all the installations and we are just waiting for Senegal to do theirs for us to commence the service.”
“We also have a single window that we are going to use for all our importation processes. We are doing all this because we want to digitalise all our operations to ensure that we have fewer human interventions and ensure more effective revenue mobilisation.”
“We also want to explore that technology. We also want to have a centre where we monitor all trade traffic. We believe all this will improve our revenue base.”
