Source : AllAfrica.com
Posted by: Webmaster on 20-Jul-2010

Dar Es Salaam — It is believed that 80% of the Government revenue, which is not collected by local governments is embezzled by the collecting agents.

A study by Ernst & Young in 2008 revealed that only 20% of the potential revenue is collected by local governments.

At a recent seminar on the budget, delegates questioned where the remaining 80% goes while the infrastructure is still poor?

The seminar, organized jointly by Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), noted that there is inadequate financial and collecting arrangements to ensure proper collection and recording of all revenue.

A report noted that that almost local councils were not aggressive in collecting revenues due under their jurisdiction and on soliciting for other avenues which might boost their financial base and increase the council's solvency and liquidity. This has led to over dependency of central government disbursements.

Recurrent expenditure is being financed by these transfers for over 90%, whereas it was supposed to be largely financed by internal sources of revenue.

An audit report noted that councils are not efficiently collecting revenues from internal resources up to the levels expected and that the compliance in paying local taxes like property tax is very low hence hampering the possibilities of councils to increase their internal sources of revenues.

According to the Senior Auditor, Mr. Deogratias Kirama, there were 133 councils represented in Tanzania.

"Imagine if serious auditing is made in the entire 133 councils in the country, how much of revenue collection will not been remitted by the collecting agents?" he wondered