Minister for Finance, Dr William Mgimwa

The government expects to collect a total of 8.2trn/- revenue from various sources during the 2012/13 fiscal year, Minister for Finance Dr William Mgimwa disclosed here yesterday.

Tabling his ministry’s budget estimate and expenditure for 2012/13 fiscal year, Dr Mgimwa said the government collected 6.7trn/- during the last financial year, .5trn/- more than the planned 6.2trn/-.

The Minister said the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) will be commissioned to collect 8.07trn/- in income tax while 124bn/- will be non-tax income.

He said during the current financial year, his ministry plans to collect 3.2trn/- from foreign loans and grants.

Debating the budget, MPs blamed the government over its dependency on foreign aid, stressing the need to strengthen internal revenue sources.

They said the strategy adopted by the government had contributed to pile-up of the debt stock, retarding of implementation of development projects in the country.

They said the government failed to implement its core development projects because of the deficits caused by too much dependency on foreign aid and loans.

Bariadi-East MP, John Cheyo (UDP) said the government needed to effectively invest in different projects such as mineral extraction, gas, uranium and tourism industry for it to get funds to run its development projects.

MP James Mbatia faulted the government for failing to tax big business such as mining companies.

“It’s sad to give mining companies a total of 1.05trn/-in tax exemptions and 114m/- to religious institution…we need to re-examine our systems of collecting taxes,” he said.

For his part, Zitto Kabwe shadow finance minister, tabling alternative budget said there was need for TRA to collect revenues amounting to 1trn/- a month.

In order to reach the target, Kabwe who is also a legislator for Kigoma-North said TRA needed to control tax exemptions, collect the needed tax from mining sectors and closely monitor companies from evading taxes.