Activist call for revenue audit on state governments
A civil society activist has called on the national government to audit the state revenue-generating institutions and promptly inform the public about state-level spending.
The Executive Director of Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), Edmund Yakani, said the regular auditing of state government would prevent mismanagement of public funds especially the Personal Income Tax (PIT) collected at the state level.
Mr Yakani, who claimed to have visited eight of the 10 states and one administrative area, alleged that despite traces of revenue collection, there was no tangible impact in terms of service delivery to the citizens in those states.
“Most of the state governments are now administering the personal income tax, and besides they have the responsibility of administering other state revenues,’’ he stated.
“So the majority of the governors are controlling the public revenue at the state level, and that has made service delivery through state-generated revenue level very, very low.”
“My appeal is that there is a need for the top leadership of the country to ensure that this does not give the state government officials to run away with the generated public revenues,” Yakani said.
Yakani called on the presidency to commission the national audit chamber to audit state governments and ascertain how the collection of revenue and spending is being managed in all the 10 states and three administrative areas.
He added, “There are visible sources of revenues being collected but those revenues are not translated into services delivery and even there is lack of transparency around the management of the state-based collected revenues.”
In November 2021, during the governors’ forum in Juba, states were granted the collection of the PIT from employees of private sectors including non-governmental organisations following a thorough debate over the matter.
The consensus reached between the national and state governments was to allow the latter to avoid total dependency on the previous for funding some of the states’ developmental projects in line with the financial management reforms provided for by the revitalized peace agreement.
Since the inception of the coalition government in February 2020, financial management reform has been on top of government priorities. President Salva Kiir has been serious about the matter. In November, he ordered the Minister of Finance and Planning Agak Achuil to ensure corruption was avoided in public funds management.
Agak subsequently warned revenue collecting agencies saying: “The national revenue authority was created to collect the taxes. It is not a spending agency.
“All the money should be collected and I will be the one to release it. Do not take the money from the collection account.”