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Thupeyo Muleya, Beitbridge Bureau 

THE Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) board has approved the parastatal’s five-year strategic plan, which has been modelled in line with the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP).

Acting Zimra head of corporate affairs, Mrs Inzwirashe Muwonwa, in statement on Monday said the plan was anchored on four “Ps” which include people, processes, partnerships and projects.

She said that establishing the right staffing structure and skills development were critical to their strategy.

“This entails the right recruitment of people with proper skills alignment, appropriate human capital planning and development, the creation of a conducive working environment and the motivation of Zimra’s employees,” she said.

Mrs Muwonwa said hiring of an external human resources consultant was being processed to assist in a staff rationalisation exercise.

The programme would help ensure staff structure was well aligned to the strategy and enhance proper skills alignment for increased productivity, higher service delivery and efficiency. 

Due to low staffing levels against the approved structure, she ruled out any job losses but said identification of skills required will be done to fill the existing gaps.

“On processes, we are pursuing the development and implementation of effective, efficient and simplified processes that enable us to meet service targets within budget in a cost effective manner,” said Mrs Muwonwa. 

“The authority is also going to embark on a business process re-engineering project to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our internal processes and systems. Improved systems are also a deterrent to corruption and help protect honest staff, while giving confidence to our stakeholders and clients. The project can only be successful with the full involvement of all staff members.”

Under the plan, Zimra will build win-win strategic partnerships with taxpayers in order to promote voluntary compliance and effective partnerships with other stakeholders to support the delivery of value to customers.

Adequate resource mobilisation is critical in supporting economic development and fulfilling Vision 2030 of an upper middle-income economy.

This also calls for strong partnerships with regional and international development entities towards provision of funding.

“The strategic plan will see adoption and application of international best practice project management principles to successfully implement our projects on time, within stated budget and scope,” said Mrs Muwonwa.

She said several projects had been lined up for the period 2019-2023 and that these would be monitored at executive committee level.

They include data cleansing to harmonise domestic taxes database and eliminate inaccuracies, update the database ahead of a new tax, installation and configuration of a new tax revenue management system for domestic taxes and upgrade of customs system, among others.

The construction of staff accommodation at border posts and office accommodation including construction of Zimra head office in Harare and the acquisition of state-of-the-art modern servers and setting up of a centralised data centre with capacity to handle and store big data, will be prioritised.

“Further, we are also planning on the automation review of processes and automation of identified processes. There will also be integration of different systems within the organisation and integration of Zimra systems to identified external stakeholders,” said Mrs Muwonwa.

“In addition, we have also planned for development and equipment of a centralised surveillance and monitoring command centre in Harare…there will also be the debt management project to reduce the outstanding legacy debt, which stood at $5 billion as at 31st December 2018 and will realign processes, systems, structures and staff culture to new strategy.”