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Brighton Gumbo, Business Reporter
DEPRESSED international commodity prices and a July, 17, 2015, court ruling resulted in a 113 percent slump in mineral royalties to a negative $19,4 million in the year ended December, 31, 2015, Zimra said yesterday.

In a revenue performance annual report, Zimra board chairperson Willia Bonyongwe said the tax collector had targeted to raise $146 million from mineral royalties but only managed a negative $19,4 million.

“Gross mining royalties amounted to $82,13 million. However, mining royalties closed the year with negative collections of $19,42 million due to a refund of $101,6 million that was processed during the fourth quarter of 2015,” said Bonyongwe.

“The performance of the revenue head was negatively affected by a court ruling which resulted in the refund. The future performance of mining royalties is dependent on prices of minerals on international markets, production levels and government policy going forward.”

She said the revenue body recorded a 110 percent decline in revenue collection from the $192 million that was collected in 2014.

Bonyongwe said the period under review has been characterised by a number of challenges, which affected economic performance.

The challenges included the liquidity crunch, limited lines of credit from financial institutions, power shortages, retrenchments and company closures.

Revenue collections under the individual tax head amounted to $777,8 million against a target of $835 million resulting in a negative variance of seven percent.

“The revenue collections for 2015 reflect largely the subdued state of the economy during the reporting period,” said Bonyongwe.

During the same period last year, $912 million was collected against a target of $760 million, marking a 20 percent increase.

She said collections under company tax amounted to $425 million against the targeted $448 million resulting in a negative variance of five percent.

On Value Added Tax on local sales, she said gross collections were $547 million against a target of $641 million which translates to a negative variance of 15 percent.

Collections from VAT on imports amounted to $441 million against a target of $410 million, marking a positive variance of 8 percent.

Customs duty collections during the period under review amounted to $337 million against a target of $390 million resulting in a negative variance of 14 percent.

Performance of the customs duty head during the period under review was attributable to refunds and duty suppressing measures such as rebates, suspensions and trade agreements.

Over $714 million was collected under excise duty against the projected $590 million resulting in a positive variance of 21,1 percent.

Carbon tax contributed a 17 percent increase to $36 million during the first half of the year against the targeted $30,5 million.