By MAIMBOLWA MULIKELELA –
THE World Bank has started building a model that will assist the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) develop its mineral royalty forecasts.
This is aimed at improving the revenue collection from the mining industry.
World Bank Country director Kundhavi Kadiresan said the bank was building a model that can help ZRA develop its mineral royalty forecasts directly from firm-level operational data and future price projections.
This will be more accurate than relying on aggregate historical trends.
Dr Kadiresan said in Lusaka that improved revenue forecast was urgently needed for the Zambian mining sector hence the need to have a model that would assist the Government to have accurate statistics on the mineral royalty.
She said that the tax collection was estimated to be 14 per cent below budget for mineral royalty, 10 per cent for customs and nine per cent for the excise taxes.
“The total domestic revenue collection is projected to be four per cent higher than originally budgeted for 2014 and 26 per cent above what was collected in 2013,” Dr Kadiresan said.
She said all sources of domestic revenue grew above the 2013 levels but collections from several instruments fell short of the budget target.
Dr Kadiresan said the model once developed would enable ZRA have the capacity to collect accurate revenue on mineral royalty from the mining companies.
