COMMENT: Shake up of revenue agencies

The Government has threatened a major shake up within the ranks of Ghana’s Revenue Agencies particularly the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) and other Agencies under the Ghana Revenues Authority. The announcement was made by the Minister for Information and Media Relations, Mr. Mahama Ayariga at one of his daily Press briefings.

According to Mr. Ayariga, the imminent shake up is to get rid of some ‘inefficient’ people in these organizations who are causing the state to lose huge sums of money. He also said that the Chief of Staff has set up a high powered security task force to go round the country especially where revenue comes from and monitor activities there and apprehend persons who are engaged in corrupt practices.

Sounds good; if people are inefficient and causing the state to lose money then they must go. Maybe the high-powered task force will make a change monitoring and arresting thieves and cause our revenues to swell.

However we at the Scandal think that if we truly want to cause positive changes to our revenue collection in this country then we need to do something more than sack a few bosses and set up a task force to be visiting revenue collection centers. The new people can be corrupted as well and besides we have an Audit Service whose duty is to regularly audit the accounts of all public offices including the revenue offices. So leakages will not stop just because we have changed the guards and set up new monitoring team.

We invite the Chief of Staff to read the Auditor General Report of 2011 and see what waste exists in the system. The Report is replete with stories of how some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA’s) and the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD) appear to have shirked their responsibilities and have literally thrown away Millions of Dollars belonging to the country.

Government properties are sold, and nobody follows up to collect the monies. Government buys interests in private companies and actually pays for the shares, but nobody follows up to make sure the records are updated to reflect the new shareholding structure and nobody bothers to follow up on dividends or returns on the investment.

In some cases, government give loans to private companies and these are not even recorded or reported in the public accounts. In some cases, there are no agreements covering these loans. Where there are agreements no one actually works to recover the loans.

In the 2011 Auditor Generals Report, there are stories about how poor treasury management in the year resulted in the loss of over GHc75million in Bank Charges alone. Also, an amount of GHc5.8m of Non-Tax Revenue, which was supposed to be paid in the consolidated fund, has since not been paid. There are also stories of multiple payments of salaries and pensions, multiple dormant bank accounts and off course the infamous judgment debt.

In this Report, the Auditor General categorically states that GHc218m was paid as judgment debt in 2011 and described these debts as “reckless and avoidable.” The Sole Commissioner on Judgment Debt seems to agree with this statement.

These same stories can be found in the 2009 and the2010 Auditor General Reports. And as sure as daylight these reports will again appear in the 2012 Auditor General’s Report. The question is, what have we done with all these cases? Nothing.

So then first let us see some action to recover the losses that have been reported to you before we go looking for new thieves.

The other concern of the Scandal is the weak, porous structure of revenue collection in this country. When revenue collectors go out and collect revenue from shopkeepers, saloons, barbering shops, market women etc. do these monies really get to their destinations? In the developed world when a police officer issues you with a ticket for an offence, you know you have got to pay. You cannot hide. That record will follow you wherever you go. The reason is that there is a structure, a trail that captures you at every public service point. Is that too difficult to adopt?

When you don’t have this type of system and insists on widening your tax net you do so for corrupt revenue collectors not the state. When you have the responsibility to fill a leaking container with water common sense should tell you that it is not many more hands you need to fill the container. What you need is to plug the leakage.