IRD’s Rs. 10bn software for tax collection not functioning properly: COPA reveals

It was revealed at the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) that the Revenue Administration Management Information System (RAMIS), which is established for tax revenue collection in the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) at a cost of Rs. 10 billion was not functioning properly.

This was revealed at the Committee on Public Accounts which met in Parliament yesterday under the chairmanship of Kabir Hashim.

The Inland Revenue Department had started the software system in 2014 to increase the efficiency of tax revenue collection of the Inland Revenue Department by investing about Rs.10 billion.

The Chairman said that he believes that more money has already been spent to strengthen this system and emphasized that it is necessary to find out whether spending money further for this purpose is effective.

The Auditor General mentioned that the Inland Revenue Department does not provide him with information about the service agreement and relevant payment details related to the above system.

He further pointed out that the Inland Revenue Department refuses to provide particular information to the Auditor General according to the agreement, and that it is against the constitution.

The Inland Revenue officials stated that there is a need of updating this software system started in 2014 with the new Inland Revenue Act brought in 2017. They further pointed out that there is a problem in giving out the contractual information, according to the agreement with the Singaporean company that created the above software system. Also, because of this agreement is an agreement between two governments, the intervention of the government will be appropriate for its future activities, the officials of IRD said.

Thus, since there are issues in many aspects of the RAMIS system, including procurement, the COPA proposed to form two sub-committees to investigate the possibility of bringing this system to the operational level in a manner suitable for the country.

It is expected that the committee to be established jointly by the Attorney General’s Department under the leadership of the Secretary of the Ministry of Finance who will examine the legal conditions related to the RAMIS Agreement.

The committee to be established jointly with The University of Moratuwa, the Sri Lanka Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), the Inland Revenue Department, and the Ministry of Finance to look into the possibility of updating the software system. It was also agreed to submit the reports containing the conclusions on the relevant matters to the COPA within 06 weeks.(Ajith Siriwardana)