Zimra, Ministry of Finance give contradicting revenue stats

The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) says it managed to surpass its targeted revenue collection for the first quarter as Government battles to meet the April deadline to give civil servants a pay rise.

Zimra Commissioner General Gersem Pasi told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs this morning that the authority had exceeded the set target by 2 percent.

"We exceeded the quarterly target by 2 percent, that is for January, February and March," he said.

However, there seems to be no certainty on the exact figure of revenue collections for the first quarter as the Ministry of Finance had earlier said that the budget targets had been missed by 6 percent.

On Monday, Finance and Economic Development permanent secretary Willard Manungo said collections for January, February and March were 6 percent lower than what was envisioned in the budget.

Pasi said the first quarter had been generally slow and this had impacted on revenue collections.

He added that Zimra would announce the full revenue collection results for the quarter next week.

Zimra missed annual budgeted revenue for 2013 by 6 percent following missed targets for mining royalties.

Government had targeted $3,64 billion for the year but Zimra collected $3,43 billion.