19th October 2022
Own Correspondent
The Botswana Unified Revenue Service(BURS) has collected revenue totalling P23.851billion, surpassing a target of P23.217billion for the financial year 2022/2023 by P634million or 2.7%.
In comparism to the corresponding period of the previous year 2021/2022, the current overall revenue collections represent an increase of P6.571billion or 38.1%.
“This performance is not a windfall, it is a product of hardwork and commitment in addressing performance gaps as well as responding to the current business challenges,” said Jeanette C. Makgolo, BURS Commissioner General.
She said, “Our role with respect to these aspirations of the Government is to mobilise resources in the form of taxes and to facilitate trade for free and efficient movement of goods and raw materials, necessary for industrial production.”
Despite the optimism around the collections, BURS has not completed a post implementation audit of its tax administration system which is geared towards modernising BURS ICT infrastructure to enhance tax compliance and effective taxpayer services and re-engineering internal business processes for optimal business performance by September 2022.
A tender to address this anomaly is expected to be announced towards the end of October 2022. A realigned organizational structure is also scheduled to be operational before the end of 2023.
To improve employee morale BURS has introduced the excellence awards which were hosted in May 2022 to reward high performing employees.
Makgolo said “A number of initiatives are underway to secure taxpayer information and provide for physical security of both staff and taxpayers.”
These include access controls, cyber security improvements and physical security guards. Two senior BURS officials have currently been placed on precautionary suspension on different accounts with investigations into their cases ongoing.
The2021/22 filing season for BURS which was due to end 30th September 2022 has been extended until the 31st December 2022. Compliance for the period was 43% from those whose returns were expected. In numerical terms this is 27749 out of 65000 expected returns.
