The Commissioner General of the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA), Hon. Yankuba Darboe, has said that the GRA’s transformative journey would not have gathered pace had the Government of The Gambia not given it the “much-needed support”.
“Thank you to the Government for the support we needed at the time. If we don’t have that support, I will be frustrated. I can have all the ideas in the world but I can’t implement them if I don’t have the support of the government. And that’s why I finally said that I’m really grateful to the government of the day for giving me the support to implement all these programs,” the GRA boss acknowledged in a recent interview with Coffee Time With Peter Gomez, in which he enumerated the introduction of the various tax lines by the GRA and the Authority’s digitization efforts to ramp up it’s revenue collection capabilities.
The head of the Gambia’s revenue administration asserted that the various reforms that the GRA continues to introduce will be enduring.
“These projects that we are bringing are going to stay here for generations to come because we are only thinking forward to making more billions but not going back. If you put the flag up, you don’t have to allow the flag to come down and to keep the flag up there, we have to maintain these reforms which are going to be here for my children, your children and even our grandchildren to come. So, that’s why I want us to nail them down,” Darboe told host Peter Gomez.
He, therefore, thanked the Gambia government for allowing GRA to implement reforms aimed at enhancing efficiency in tax mobilization.
“I want to thank the government for giving us that strong support that we are able to implement all these reforms in this country within this specific time. And the government is seeing the benefit but they could have behaved otherwise that when we wanted to bring these reforms, they could have said no to them. There’s nothing we can do but you will just be sitting there frustrated,” stated Darboe.
The GRA boss explained that the Gambia revenue administration’s tax reforms never went unchallenged but that the government had always given it the necessary support to see them through.
“At any given time any of these reforms that we bring, you see the reaction in the street, no to this and no to that. We know why they are crying because there is a bigger thing they are hiding. We are taking reforms from the best performing countries but we need the political will. At the end of the day, what needs to be remembered is that the tax that needs to be collected needs to be collected,” CG Darboe pointed out.
The GRA boss hinted that gone are those days when the government had to go overseas with cap in hand to be able to finance national development.
“We have to start to think inwards,” he stressed.He continued:”It’s not about going out of this country to get money. But why can’t we get the money here? And one thing I believe[and] I’ve been saying that over the years: We have money in this country. It’s a question of how much we can digitize to block the leakages in the process and in doing that the government is supporting us. So, I appreciate [the support] from the President to the Cabinet and the rest of the team. I appreciate their support. We are going together and we will get to where we want to go but we can’t get there alone. GRA alone can’t do it, but with the support of the government and taxpayers, we will be proud of this country because if we do what we are supposed to do, we will see a lot of development and everybody will be proud of The Gambia. When we go to other countries, we see development; beautiful roads, lights, beautiful schools, clinics, hospitals and the likes. We want those things to be here in The Gambia, too.”
CG Darboe also acknowledged that the GRA cannot collect the billions without the compliance of the taxpayers.
“I want to thank the taxpayers for being very strong and determined to part away with money and pay to GRA, which the government uses in turn to do infrastructure development. It takes a great guy to do that. Most of the people will have money but they will be hiding,” he stated, adding, “And let me say this quickly. You know we have our biggest taxpayer on a monthly basis. A lot of people are making noise in the country here but when you look at their tax status, they are below 100. Our best taxpayers list if we print it out, you see some businesses are making noise they are below 100. And for us, we look at people that are on top. This is why on annual basis when we organize the taxpayers’ dinner, we try to bring that is highest, the next to that and others that are most compliant because we feel like if they are paying this billions to government, it’s normal one day in 365 days, you organize dinner to say thank you. I say thank you to all taxpayers be it small, medium or large. We are saying thank you to all of them.”
