Batting for a better GRA

Mar 25, 2018 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

---

As far back as we can remember, the Customs Administration and Inland Revenue Departments have had a hellish time trying to ameliorate and ultimately root out ‘endemic corruption’ in the state’s revenue collection operations.
Successive GRA Commissioners General and governments’ Cabinets have fired generations of high ranking and mid-level officials, replacing them with professionals who everyone hoped would turn the tide, change the culture, clean house to safeguard the nation’s earnings from import and export transactions. Unfortunately it has never worked. Old bad habits, it seems, die hard.
In the past we have seen monitoring systems changed completely. Staffers have been rotated in, out and around frequently to try to limit their contact (or repeated contact) with importers and other citizens conducting business with the GRA. Multimillion dollar container scanners have been installed along with modern high tech equipment and systems designed to diminish tax avoidance by tax payers.
Newer operational systems were also instituted, especially to detect age-old under-invoicing, and misstatement of the contents of barrels, crates, boxes, containers, etc. Still corruption in most every section of the revenue authority remains rampant.
Another serious bugbear besetting the collection agency could be interpreted as Customs Administration Department officers helping certain business owners – retailers and wholesalers – to surge ahead of competitors. They do this by assigning priority to these entrepreneurs’ shipments, while finding all sorts of spurious reasons to detain the shipments of certain business rivals, or assigning additional charges (which end up in the officers’ pockets) to their goods. Or course, those who benefit from such ‘favours’ skewer the balance in the commercial sector because of their ability to undersell. They could affect the in-country balance of trade, and one could assume that their selfishness affects national unemployment statistics.
So we learnt last week that the current Executives at the GRA, along with the Board of Directors have made moves to reshuffle senior and mid-level operatives. The intention, as always, is to render the collection system more efficient, more easily monitored, less prone to corruption, and able to inspire confidence in a very jaded public that has grown tired of the reported and experienced malfeasances that have been part of the course for decades.
We learnt that the Authority was recently forced to terminate the services of more than 100 staffers. Their dismissals were reportedly caused by acts of corruption and graft. Some were cited for participating in activities that cheated the State out of millions of dollars for years! Those sums, when aggregated, were enough to repair a few roads, build new health centres or new bridges, upgrade several community centres and playgrounds, or bought more tablets and computers for primary schools and their students. That money could have done much more for the growth and comfort of citizens.
Led by Finance and Tax expert as well as Attorney-at-Law, Godfrey Statia, the Executive of the GRA ought to be commended for having the bravado to take down such a strongly entrenched system. They did a good thing, especially since Guyana is about to enter a new phase of transformation into an oil and gas economy.
At this time, agencies like the GRA really should be focused almost entirely on laying a foolproof foundation for collecting every dollar that Guyana is due from its new hydrocarbon industry. Instead, GRA’s management is forced to expend excess energy on weeding out corruption, malfeasance and collusion among staffers at every level. Well, their apparent intention to institute new intelligence-led and technology-led systems deserves a Hurrah!
We’ve been hearing about the SWAPS and ASYCUDA systems that are possibly being considered for implementation in Guyana. These high tech systems will keep staff and the business community physically separate. Both of these systems are working well in our sister Caribbean nations as well as in very developed countries around the world.
Commissioner General (CG) Statia is always adamant about the positions he takes. He has vowed to walk away if he is not allowed to turn the GRA around, to get rid of officers who seem bent on continuing to corrupt the agency and the new staff, as they have been doing for many years. This is the CG’s priority number one!
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has pointed the Authority to several discernible systemic weaknesses and Mr. Statia assures us that these are being corrected with alacrity. The identified weaknesses include functional limitations in the Information Technology, especially the e-Transaction system; weak filing, payment compliance and controls; and a de-centralized audit case selection process.
Also high on the CG’s agenda for transformation is the transfer of the GRA’s headquarters to a location that is more customer-friendly. The general public deserves better than they are receiving at the current Camp Street location. Space is a luxury inside the building. Parking facilities are non-existent. Camp St. traffic is snarled in front of the GRA every minute of the business day. Sometimes one gets the image of a sports betting parlour on entering the building where people loudly compete for space and they could be heard yelling for attention.
So even before first oil comes by the first quarter of 2020 as we have been assured, the GRA’s primary role may mean a paradigm shift. This could translate into additional fully staffed Departments to focus solely on revenue collection from the many O&G companies exploring, drilling and transporting hydrocarbons, as well as the shore-based enterprises, including a possible oil refinery.
Mr. Statia has the goodwill of a fed-up populace as his tail wind. Like he and his new team, we all want the GRA to deliver a more efficient public service, one that is less prone to corruption.

---

---