GRA Official Justifies Authority’s Move
By: Momodou Justice Darboe
More than five water and beverage companies will halt operations on Monday over the GRA digital excise stamp, this medium has learned.
The engines of the country’s various water and beverageproduction companies will fall silent today as factory owners have decided to stop production until such time they reach a resolution with the Gambia government over the not-long-ago-introduced digital excise stamp.
The GRA introduced the digital excise stamp earlier this year as part of its wider digitization project and revenue collection enhancement measures.
A member of the Association of Gambian Manufacturers(AGM) informed this medium over the weekend that a decision has been reached by water production and beverage companies to down their tools today because GRA has been adamant that the companies should buy the digital stamps and their devices.
“For almost three days of last week, GRA staff were deployed at the various water and beverage production companies, preventing trucks from leaving factory premises because of the lack of agreement over the digital stamp,” he explained.
The companies said the GRA has been attempting to burden them with the financial cost involved in the utilization of the digital stamp.
“Our responsibility here is to pay tax not to incur any cost. The GRA’s insistence that we acquire the devices for the stamp would only add to our cost of doing business,” he added.
Sources have informed this reporter that the manufacturers’ association has been turning every stone to resolve the standoff.
“We met officials of the ministries of trade and finance to see how best we can resolve this issue to no avail,” one of the sources revealed.
The companies have now resorted to shutting down their factory doors today as they and GRA could not find common ground over the digital excise stamp issue.
The Corporate Affairs Manager at the GRA, Mr. Ousman Bah, confirmed to this medium on Sunday that the GRA last week mobilized officers at the various factories to monitor and ensure compliance with the digital excise stamp regime.
He stated that some factories were smuggling out truckloads of water bottles without stamps, hence the deployment of the officers.
According to Mr. Bah, the introduction of digital excise stamps was borne out of the need to facilitate revenue mobilization and protect the companies.
He explained that the GRA is only mandated to enforce the utilization of the stamp, adding that some factories have already acquired them but using them was the sticking point between them and the GRA.
