The Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA) has collected D1.5 billion in revenue in the month of March 2023.

It’s the highest tax revenue collected in a single month in the Authority’s revenue collection history, head of the Authority says.

Giving an update about last month’s revenue figure at his office on Tuesday 4 March 2023, Commissioner General Yankuba Darboe confirmed that they collected D1.5 billion last month, while hailing the commitment and professionalism of the management and staff of GRA.

According to him, this is the first time in the history of GRA that an amount of over D1.5 billion had been collected in a single month.

He thus described March as always a month of optimism as GRA scores “significant amount” in this month yearly. He added that this is mainly due to high level of voluntary tax compliance

According to CG Darboe, last year at this period, GRA collected D1.4 billion. “So this year again during the same period, GRA made over 1.5 billion which is the highest collection that we have ever collected since GRA was created. Therefore the month of March is a special month for GRA.”

He explained that the end of March is the final tax payment for 2022. “So during the course of the year, people would come forward with their income tax and corporate income on a quarterly basis. Because every other quarter, they would come and pay; that payment is just like an advance payment.”

“So by the time we get to the end of the year; when the accounts are ready, that is the time they come up and whatever they paid in the previous quarters is deducted from whatever they are supposed to pay.”

“Every year March’s ending is always special for us because it’s the year that we wrap up everything and our collection goes very high. And the reason behind is the successful team work my staff are doing. My staff are very cooperative when it comes to doing their work. We have a command that everybody follows from the CG to DCG to the directors and to the rest of the staff.”

“So we are always together and we work like a family. We are also like a team that is able to succeed in a lot of work that we do. In addition to that, I will also say that compliance level has gone up.”

“Taxpayers’ compliance levels now have gone up simply because since we started organising tax payers’ award, it has made a significant difference with the way people see taxation in this country.