Nearly 900 workers from the Finance ministry have made lateral transfers to the country’s tax agency as the Agency seeks to boost capacity and revenue.
According to Deputy Minister of Finance and Public Enterprises Maureen Hinda-Mbuende, the Namibia Revenue Agency’s (NamRA) structure has a total of 1,498 positions.
“The total number of staff members who remain seconded to NamRA from the Ministry stood at 293, the initial number of employees seconded to NamRA at the operationalisation of NamRA on the 07th of April 2021 was 1,324 employees,” she said.
The recruitment exercise by the semi-autonomous revenue agency has resulted in N$939,191,103 allocation in the recently tabled budget.
“This amount represents a realignment of expenditure from the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises to NamRA and not necessarily an increase in the overall Vote allocation. NamRA is a Non-Commercial Public Enterprise, therefore, all its operational and development related needs will be furnished by the Government through the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises, the realignment is attributed to a successful mass recruitment project which enabled the Agency to increase its Human Capital from a mere 189 employees in August 2022 to about 750 employees by the end of November 2022,” Hinda-Mbuende said while motivating the agency’s budget allocation in parliament.
She said the revenue agency plans on finalising its recruitment process before the end of the 2023/2024 financial year.
“The 2023/2024 financial year will mark the final year of transition between NamRA and the Ministry, the Agency plans on finalising its recruitment process before the end of the 2023/2024 financial year,” she said, adding that the implementation of a Tax Policy Unit within the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises for purposes of Tax policy formulation and to carry out the oversight function on NamRA was postponed to the 2023/2024 financial year
“This was due to the need to secure savings in order to implement the adjusted salary remuneration and benefits of Civil servants which was implemented during the current financial year. The Ministry has allocated a total amount of N$6,200,000 for this task,” she said while motivating the budget for the Ministry.
Meanwhile, the Agency plans to make significant investments in the “upgrade of the Asycuda World System, which is a system used by Customs Officers in the execution of their mandate, this investment will be in the form of purchasing of servers and software.”
This comes as NamRA has collected approximately N$2.8 billion from its customs and excise operations for the 2022/23 financial year from April to December, 2022.
Furthermore, NamRA’s spokesperson Yarukeekuro Ndorokaze at a media engagement last week revealed that by February 2023, NamRA had collected N$55 billion from businesses and individuals, exceeding its revenue collection target by approximately N$2 billion before the end of the financial year.
