Customs, Inland Revenue strategise to maximise revenue collections

The lack of collaboration between the Inland Revenue and the Customs Offices is officially identified as a stumbling block to maximise the collection of tax and customs revenues in Cameroon.

To reverse this trend, the Cameroonian Minister of Finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey, has just sponsored the signing of a partnership agreement between the tax and customs administrations.

In practical terms, through “Fusion”, a collection, sharing and data analysis IT system, the Inland Revenue and Customs Offices will now share their data, to optimise the collection of revenues. This tool, we learn, is the result of the cooperation between Cameroon and dGIZ, the German cooperation organisation.

According to the public Cameroonian authorities, this tool is all the more efficient as it will help, for example, in avoiding the losses registered until now during the collection the value added tax (VAT), a tax representing over 30% of the national budget.

This partnership between the Cameroonian Customs and Inland Revenue offices comes in a context of decreased oil revenues, which represent 25% of the country’s budget. Therefore, to meet its financial needs, the Cameroonian State is having recourse to loans and maximising the collection of customs and tax revenues.