Cline Town custom house renovated
The official handing over ceremony of the newly renovated NRA Customs House, Cline Town was yesterday held at the Customs House, Cline town. In her statement, the Acting Commissioner General of NRA, Madam Isata Kellah Kamara, said NRA is faced with enormous challenges of modernizing their tax policies and administrative approaches in order to maximize revenue collection, facilitate trade, combat commercial fraud and smuggling and ensure reform but must be prepared to create the right environment for customs.
She went on to say that with the heavy reliance on import duties, they are, among other things, concentrating their effort on modernizing customs by upgrading the infrastructure, policies and systems. She said up to 2009 the Customs and Excise department contributed about 60% of the total revenue collected by the NRA. “This is about to change with the establishment of the domestic Tax that is under way,” she added.
However, she went on to say that the modernization plan funded mostly by DFID was developed in 2007. To address the issue of building sustainable improvement in the authority’s performance despite a few hiccups which saw the cancellation of a point of the initial grout, DFID their funding partner, few months ago commenced the disbursement of the funds to continue with customs modernization.
Member of the Board of Directors of NRA, Mr. Melvin Tucker also stated that handing over ceremony of the office building by the contractor to NRA is a milestone in the progress of the modernization of their revenue authority. The custom house, as it appeared, is quite an improvement of what it was before.
The NRA is a relatively young institution having been incorporated by the National Revenue Act 2007. At inception it was brought together two identifiable institutions, namely the Customs and Excise department and the Income Tax department.
He also went on to say that they at the board place a lot of emphases on staff traveling and have expressed the need for trainers to come to Sierra Leone and train a large group of trainers.
NRA consultant, Mr. Thomas Koroma said they are very happy for a job well done.
The programme was chaired by Mr. Bilah Kargbo while other speakers also made statements.
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