A seven-member committee set up by Northern Bahr el Ghazal State’s Parliament to investigate the collection of state revenues has concluded its work and presented its findings on Wednesday.
In its report, the committee formed to investigate the collection of revenues from September 2022 to February 2023, revealed that the state government managed to collect 259,492, 159 SSP and 427,032.14 US dollars.
William Wel Deng, who heads the committee, told Radio Tamazuj that they found out that the collected amounts were 259,492, 159 SSP and 427,032.14 USD.
“The total amount in terms of US dollars is 427,032.14. Secondly, taxation, operationalization license, trade license tax including the general taxation in terms of South Sudanese Pound was 259,492, 159, and this is the whole amount we got in a two-month investigation on collected revenues in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State,” Deng said.
The lawmaker said the state government had already spent the collected amounts. He also revealed that the investigation committee found out that there were multiple agencies involved in the collection of revenues in the state.
“Also, many Non-Governmental Organizations refused to cooperate with the investigation committee. They did not reveal the exact number of their employees who pay Personal Income Tax to the state government,” he said.
Another Member of Parliament, Garang Alich, said that the state legislative assembly would summon the state minister of finance and the commissioner of revenue authority to explain some missing information in the report.
“The committee has presented its report after spending more than three months and we postponed the sitting until when the commissioner of revenue authority and the minister of finance confirm the authenticity of the data obtained because there are unclear issues in this report,” he concluded.
The constitution gives the legislative assembly powers to exercise legislative functions, oversee the executive, and authorize the allocation of resources and revenue.