The executive staff of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is currently being restructured as part of its succession planning following a de-bunching exercise, Commissioner-General Godfrey Statia has revealed.
“During 2019, you’ll see some executive staff changes. The entire organisational chart would be revamped so that it would provide for more efficient operations. We would continue with the staff rotations and improvements,” Statia told a press conference last Friday.
He explained that as of December 31st, 2018, workers have been de-bunched based on years of experience.
“We have gone through and done a de-bunching exercise, whereby staff who have been complaining for years that those who enter with them have been getting the same pay as those who have been here for five, six or 10 years. We’ve gone through that exercise and we’ve remedied that and that is from December 31st, 2018,” Statia said, before adding that for the first time in 18 years GRA has put in place a performance appraisal system.
Appraisals for 2018 are expected to be completed by March, after which employees will be in a position to receive salary increases.
Additionally, efforts are being made to facilitate staff training in taxation. Statia bemoaned the fact that while the organisation possibly has the highest ratio of university graduates of any government agency, many of the graduates are not trained in taxation. “We have recommenced our tax training and we will continue throughout this year,” he said.
One of those training efforts will specifically relate to the use of the Automated System for Customs Data (ASYCUDA). During the next couple of weeks, a team is to be sent to India to learn how to access the valuation databases of many countries so as to assist in combatting the under and over-invoicing of items being brought into the country.
Statia explained that while ASYCUDA is slated to be turned on by the end of the first quarter of this year, it is not expected to be fully installed until the second quarter as the agency has been facing a push back from several stakeholders. “We’ve been getting push back from our own staff. Our own staff, who are accustomed to their ways, have been pushing back. We’ve been getting pushback from companies because we know as long at the ASYCUDA system is in place and you have to file the cargo manifest, there is less room for corruption. We have gotten push back from our custom’s brokers,” he noted, while stressing that even with cut- off dates for implementation, commerce must move on and all of the resistance has led to compromise.
The Ministry of Public Health and other government institutions were cited for contributing to the problems as they are not equipped to clear their goods themselves and often import “just in time cargo.”
“We cannot tell the Health Minister and the army and the police that we are not clearing their goods, so they are partly responsible for the backlog we have and even though we have written them no one has moved in the right direction,” he complained, while stressing that half of the time GRA is blamed although it is not responsible.
Going forward, he said GRA intends to “grade” not only the companies which are compliant but also brokers who are not compliant so the public “will be able to know who are A brokers and B brokers.”
He also said that brokers trained in ASYCUDA have left local companies to work with foreign-owned companies, such as ExxonMobil, thereby creating another backlog.