RRA causes chaos with new payment system.

A move by Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) to channel payment of customs duty at the borders through Bank of Kigali is creating chaos.

RRA director of customs Eugene Torero and commissioner general Mary Baine; Torero says the agency is working to solve the problem of delays at customs. (file photos).

The system was meant to make it easier for traders to pay their taxes. However, since there is only a single teller who at times has to deal with 30 customers at once, what used to be a rather straightforward procedure has now become a businessman’s nightmare.

“Why can’t they post several tellers to speed up the clearing process rather than make us queue here for eternity,” is the obvious question asked by a trader who could only be identified as Mugarura.

What incenses traders further is the fact that the teller often seems to be confused and takes forever to clear a single person, as he has to verify several times whether he has entered the right figures into the computer before passing the clearing documents to a RRA employee sitting next to him who further delays the clearing process.

Before the new system was introduced, importers used to pay customs duty directly at RRA border offices, which according to many traders was quick and efficient; the process took no more than ten minutes. Today, you can spend half an hour getting your goods cleared.

That causes serious problems to small traders who use regional bus services as means of transport. The busses, of course, have their schedule and cannot wait for passengers to finish clearing their goods.  As a result, when the exasperated businessmen finally emerge from customs, their bus has long gone and a new battle ensues between traders trying to lay their hands on whatever means transport is available.

“This is just unbelievable!” exclaimed an anonymous trader, watching his bus disappear in the distance. “Now I’ll have to pay another 30,000 francs for a van, on top of my bus ticket!”

He pointed out that before the new system was put in place, his goods would be cleared within 15 minutes and he would proceed to Kigali with the bus.

Many traders prefer paying their customs duty at the border so they can take their merchandise directly to their stores and avoid the hustle of having to pay taxes at the customs headquarters in Kigali.

Eugene Torero, the deputy commissioner general of RRA and the director of customs, recognizes that the delays pose a serious problem for traders, yet he says that the tax agency is aware of it.

According to him, the problem is in part due to network failure but also to the fact that the procedure is still new. “Just like any other new system, it has some hiccups but we are working on solving that,” Torero says, adding that the new system was introduced to reduce the handling of cash by RRA employees, so as to avoid cases of corruption and embezzlement.

Torero further stresses that for goods transported by bus, customs duty does not necessarily have to be paid at the border but can also be dealt with in Kigali. Meanwhile, RRA is also in discussions with Bank of Kigali to solve the capacity problem.

“We are currently in talks with the bank to increase the number of tellers to reduce the delays,” he said. Why they didn’t do that in the first place, since it is clear that one person is insufficient for a busy border post such as Gatuna, he doesn’t say.

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