October 23, 2012 (JUBA) – The governor of Central Equatoria state, Clement Wani Konga, has threatened to pull out his state from the centralized tax collection system in South Sudan, saying the system was 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 the neighboring countries and collect the taxes by themselves.
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 in 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 was not 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 half a million after the introduction of the centralized tax collection system.
This unexpected decision by Central Equatoria state may meet resistance by the national goverment which the state also hosts in the transitional capital.
(ST)