CES governor threatens to pullout from centralized tax collection system

October 23, 2012 (JUBA) – The Governor of Central Equatoria state, Clement Wani Konga, has threatened to pull his state out of South Sudan’s centralized tax collection system, saying the system has been corrupted, resulting to the massive loss of revenues.

In a press statement released on Tuesday, Konga said as from November 1 next week he will begin to unilaterally deploy his state’s tax collectors to all the state’s international borders with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The national government has since last year introduced a new centralized tax collection system in which it collects various categories of taxes on one table on behalf of all the levels of government and distributes to each level their shares.

Individuals and some illegal organizations at the national, state and local levels used to collect taxes at the borders and established tax collection check points inside South Sudan for self–benefit, prompting the national government to centralize the collection.

Governor Konga, however said the centralized system is not being properly implemented which he criticized because it has resulted to a significant fall in the share of Central Equatoria State.

He further explained that his state used to collect an average of 11 million South Sudanese pounds per year on its own but the recent report revealed that the amount has sharply fallen to only about 1.5 million SSP after the introduction of the centralized tax collection system.

This unexpected decision by Central Equatoria State may meet resistance by the national government which the state also hosts in the transitional capital.

(ST)