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Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) and Road Safety Agency (RTSA) has revealed that about 753 motor vehicles had discrepancies amounting to a loss of K27.2 million of the 32,292 flagged-off vehicles.
This is according to a joint statement issued by ZRA Public Relations Officer, Oliver Nzala, and RTSA Acting Head-Public Relations, Mukela Mangolwa, in Lusaka on Thursday.
Nzala and Mangolwa said that of the 33,045 flagged-off motor vehicles, 753 were established to have anomalies at importation, while 32,292 were determined to be duly cleared.
They stated that a breakdown of the motor vehicles with anomalies showed that 447 motor vehicles were registered with suspected forged customs documents.
Nzala and Mangolwa added that 82 of the vehicles were undervalued while 55 were suspected of abusing the ASYCUDA additional Processing Code (APC) for imports by government ministries.
“The audit further revealed that there is rampant misuse of homemade trailer plates and that there are cases of addition of extra alpha-numerical characters on chassis numbers on customs documents and modification of original declarations or re-use of customs entries.
“These vices contribute to tax evasion and have overtime resulted in spillage of the much-needed government revenue,” they added.
They further stressed that to prevent anomalies and revenue losses, RTSA and ZRA had interfaced their electronic Zambia Transport Information System (e-ZamTIS) and ASYCUDAWorld.
Nzala and Mangolwa disclosed that the interface was officially launched on October, 5 2022, adding that the interface enabled real-time transmission of motor vehicle information between the two systems and automated the RTSA customs validation process for imported motor vehicles before registration.
They said members of the public whose motor vehicles were identified to have anomalies would be contacted by RTSA and ZRA for final verifications.
“Through this exercise, it is expected that all motor vehicles which were irregularly imported shall have to follow the due-process of the Law and account for all the taxes,” they emphasized.
This comes after findings that 33,045 imported motor vehicles had no matching records at the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) and the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) as announced in the media in 2022.
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