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By Henry Uche
Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) through its Tax Academy has commenced training on compliance risk management for six senior personnel of the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA).
The training, which held recently inLagos, aimed at boosting the capacity of tax personnel for more effective and efficient tax management and administration in the Gambia.
The team leader, Mr. Ebou Jallow, who is the Deputy Commissioner- Tax Audit of GRA, said that compliance risk management is very crucial in tax management and that there is risk in not complying with risk management strategies.
“We’re here to learn from our big brother – Nigeria, to acquire knowledge on how to develop and improve our domestic compliance risk strategies for efficient and effective risks management and administration to improve the lives of taxpayers in Gambia,” Jallow said.
He added that GRA has a lot to achieve in 2024 and that compliance in tax collection and strategy is a challenge in GRA, coupled with a decrease in grants and aids. “Domestic revenue mobilisation is becoming a priority but aids and grants are dropping, so we have to look inward by improving compliance and expand our tax space.
“Nigeria has gone far in making use of modern technological tools in its tax management. As a well advanced country in tax administration, our Commissioner chose CITN among others in Africa to train us on compliance risk management as the world keeps evolving. This is an advanced training program, in other words, we hope to improve in our compliance risk level on return,” he said.
He added that the training would improve the overall operations of Gambian Tax Authority which shall translate to efficient utilization of peoples’ taxes.
“We look up to gaining lot of knowledge from CITN to meet up with modern trends in tax administration and management,” he maintained.
On his part, the President/ Chairman of Council of CITN, Mr. Samuel Agbeluyi, avowed that the relationship between Gambia and Nigeria is becoming cordial through the Institute and GRA, and would remain optimistic as they journey through the second batch of the training.
“Two weeks ago we trained six staff of Gambian Revenue Authority on Change Management, today we starting another round of training for another set of personnel from Risk Compliance Department of their Revenue Authority. We know everything in life has some elements of risk attached, so it’s very important to factor in strategies and experts to manage such risks.”
CITN Chief who empathized the need to share knowledge with one another particularly in governance, technology and leadership, expressed optimism that other countries and corporate bodies around the world would soon follow suit for collaboration and knowledge sharing on the topical issue – Tax management.
“It’s a credit for Nigeria. If everyone in our respective domains do the right thing at the right time, countries would start looking for us. If Nigeria win everyone wins. This training is knowledge -base and technical.”
Agbeluyi who assured that Nigeria would continue to feel its impact, posited, “Taxation is dynamic. Things are changing rapidly. Thus; we need to change with time. So Gambian Tax Authority has done well by engaging us to train their personnel in Risk Compliance, which is very critical, so, they need to meet up with the speed of time to be able to deliver the best form of governance to their people through proper management of their taxes,” he added.
