Zimbabwe Revenue Authority surpasses revenue target

THE Zimbabwe Revenue Authority has surpassed its first quarter revenue target by 8 percent, collecting US$773,7 million on the back of improved compliance levels by clients. The revenue authority had intended to collect US$715,4 million during the period.

Board chairman Mr Sternford Moyo, in his report for the period under review, said the economic recovery had resulted in stable disposable incomes, now being  spent on excisable products.

He said that demand for fuel had one up marginally due to the improvement in capacity utilisation by industry. Value Added Tax had continued to contribute significantly to Government coffers, he said.

The revenue head contributed US$292,7 million, which amounts to 38 percent of total collections.

This was followed by Individual Tax, which contributed 19 percent to total revenue after collections totalled US$145,5 million.

Total collections for Excise Duty amounted to US$88,9 million against a target of US$70 million.

According to the report, gross VAT collections were 15 percent above target after totalling US$292,8 million against a target of US$249,5 million.

But net collections (after effecting VAT refunds) amounted to US$260,5 million against US$249,5 million, which translates to a positive variance of 4 percent.

VAT on local sales contributed 54 percent of total VAT revenue while the remainder was from VAT on imports.

"The outstanding performance of this revenue head can be attributed to improved local industrial capacity utilisation which enhanced performance of VAT on local sales," said Mr Moyo.

In addition, improvement in disposable incomes due to upward review of the tax-free threshold and the upward review of employees' salaries by some companies resulted in increased consumption of commodities which attract VAT.

The Finance Ministry has set a tax revenue target of US$3,4 billion to finance the 2012 National Budget of US$4 billion. The remainder of US$600 million is expected to come from diamond revenues.

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