03 Oct 2023

The upbeat Botswana Unified Revenue Services (BURS) has already collected about P33 billion, which is more than half of the P60.4 billion targeted collection for the current financial year.

BURS commissioner general, Ms Jeanette Makgolo announced during a press conference in Gaborone Thursday that already months into the financial year, the agency was looking poised to exceed the target once again.

“We continue to leverage on lessons from our success in the previous year,” Ms Makgolo said, adding that last year they exceeded the target of P47 billion by 4.55 per cent.

Ms Makgolo said should the collection rate continue its trajectory, BURS would exceed target by at least six per cent, which would be good news for the country coffers.

In addition, she said considering the importance of revenue collection to the country’s fiscal, BURS had devised a revenue mobilisation strategy.

“The strategy targeted collection of outstanding returns and overdue payment across all tax types, particularly VAT and PAYE, which were supposed to be submitted with payment.”

It also targeted debt collection focusing on issuing final demands to defaulters , increasing targeted audit interventions, automating all manual payments, developing and implementing the e-service strategy and monitoring high risk and high value customs consignments to close revenue leakages. Also, Ms Makgolo told the media that owing to low turnout, the tax filing season for the tax year ended June 23, had been extended from September 30 to December 31.

“This extension became inevitable due to low turnout for the returns filing,” she said, adding that out of the expected 70 000 tax payers elected to file returns, only 15 986 had submitted returns.

However, she said she took solace that most of the public service employees had just received certificate of tax deductions, which could have contributed to the low turnout.

Furthermore, Ms Makgolo said she was committed to the transformation of BURS to strategically position the revenue services in achieving its mandate.

Such, she said, included mobilising domestic revenue for funding government programmes, border management to protect citizens against harmful and illicit products and facilitating trade through ensuring seamless movement of goods and people across borders.

In addition, she said in recognition of its tremendous innovation and enhanced customer centric service, BURS had received two awards at the recent Africa climate summit.

The awards were for the best use of technology to revolutionise customer experience. 

Ms Makgolo was awarded public sector woman of the year award. ends