Thursday, March 28, 2024

ZRA impounds trucks laden with smuggled cooking oil

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ZRA
The Zambia Revenue Authority has impounded four trucks laden with smuggled cooking oil with a value for duty purposes of K462,177.60 which was not declared and had false transit papers.

The cooking oil would have attracted taxes equivalent to K207,979.92.

ZRA Corporate Communications Manager Mumbuna Kufekisa in a statement to QFM News says the trucks were impounded during enforcement activities over the past couple of weeks aimed at detecting smuggling of goods into the country.

Mr Kufekisa says the trucks were detained during the regular enforcement patrols in the Northern Region and also by the alert officers based at the Enforcement Centre in Kapiri Mposhi.

He says the cooking oil which was on the trucks was smuggled into the country contrary to the provision of section 149 of the Customs and Excise Act.

Mr Kufekisa says the matter is under further investigations and collection of taxes due on the consignment.

He states that ZRA is determined to curb and eradicate smuggling and ensure all due taxes are collected and the enforcement activities will continue throughout the year.

18 COMMENTS

  1. Yes somebody would easily smuggle this oil because that tax is abnormal. How can you go and import cooking oil and get charged all this more than half of the value of goods for tax. That is mad. I would do same too. What kind of laws are these. Now if this guy had to pay this hefty tax how much would a zambian buy the oil for. This seller will transfer that hefty tax on innocent zambians. Our tax system is bad and if we are to promote compliance this needs to be amended.

    • Our tax system is not good. Last time i went to collect a bag of clothes from the airport zega ltd. Clothes just gifted by our diaspora people just 20kg bag. I was made to pay 3million kwacha. I told my diaspora people never to send clothes again but send money instead.those cloths in zambia terms were worth 300 thousand kwacha but the tax officer asked me ati where are the clothes coming from? And my mistake answer was UK and she calculated her tax in pounds coverting to kwacha became 3million unrebased. On top of that ati i have done you a favour buy me talk time. Useless officerz

    • U sound like an ***** on this topic. What is your computation like? Listen, there are four 30ton trucks here. Do your maths properly, then u will c sense. Be responsible. *****!

    • The tax is very small. In fact it should have been more than that. There are some culprits who involved and they might have eaten some kick back. Mumbuna investigate properly

  2. Are you not aware that govt has banned the importation of cooking oil to promote and secure local manufacturers. Stop exposing yo empty useless good for nothing brains. Everywhere yu go tax invarsion is a serious crime. Try to do the same where to are and yu be out on the next plane back to Zambia.

    • Sponge Bob, the government might have banned the importation of cooking oil but the question is are local producers able to meet the demand? And we have a right to use different cooking oils. There are numerous oils out there that local producers can’t produce because of lack of raw materials. Avocado oil, rape seed oil, olive oil etc. all these are cooking oils. The govt bans products then hike taxes to make money. ZRA officials are so corrupt that they cream off the money before the govt gets it. Government does not have to set such high taxes. Most of the money is stolen anyway!

    • Ba sponge naimwe zambia is not able to sustain itself with the local oil. Check oil in shoprite is from south africa. A ban on food is a york on citizens. If oil was readily available there would never be oil iyakupimisha. You see the more oil will mean less price and a happy citizen. A happy citizen is = to good peaceful citizen. Remember Zambia is a member of comesa. There goods which can be taxed heavily not saladi. By the way I am in zambia kabwata. Don’t be cheated by the flag

  3. Ba sponge naimwe zed is not able to sustain itself with the local oil. Check oil in shoprite is from south africa. A ban on food is a york on citizens. If oil was readily available there would never be oil iyakupimisha. You see the more oil will mean less price and a happy citizen. A happy citizen is = to good peaceful citizen. Remember Zed is a member of comesa. There goods which can be taxed heavily not saladi. By the way I am in zambia kabwata. Don’t be cheated by the flag.

  4. Ba sponge naimwe zed is not able to sustain itself with the local oil. Check oil in shoprite is from south africa. A ban on food is a york on citizens. If oil was readily available there would never be oil iyakupimisha. You see the more oil will mean less price and a happy citizen. A happy citizen is = to good peaceful citizen. Remember Zed is a member of comesa. There goods which can be taxed heavily not saladi. By the way I am in zambia kabwata. Don’t be cheated by the flag.

  5. Just acquaint yourself with how govt operates. Thats why we say education coupled with experience makes one know what it takes to run a country.
    Some of yu critics are good in general but the stance yu have taken of being perpetual opposers is what will destroy you. You are the same people who on one side are saying don’t give Chinese to set up milling plants because we can also do it. Last week 46 locals abandoned contracts after they got cash because thats is what they wanted. Today you are saying we need imported goods not ours. See how you are busy misguiding yourself. Govt doesn’t do just one thing but hundreds of projects at once. Its not like a one man business selling mealie meal .

  6. guys let us stop commenting on things we havent done research on, this love, hate type of relationships will damage ourselves and our country. tax is tax let the ZRA guys do their job. remember that its mumbuna kufekisa who has informed us about the smuggled goods and not anyone else. if there are some few corrupt characters at ZRA that you may have know, there is a system in place of how your grievance can be addressed. Remember that there is a corruptor and corruptee, all the two are guilty as charged, but you only acuse one side of the coin. if we continue this kind of behaviour as a country, i can assure you that we are heading for a serious amagedon and nose dive like the germanwing plane which crashed in the french alps. let us practice love.

  7. ZRA make sure that these smugglers are locked up for a long time. We must all obey and follow the laws of the land. For your own info NWK agri services have closed down their oil plant in Petauke, they have transferred this op to south africa, they get raw cotton seed from here process it in south africa and send back to Zambia the oil plus other products like oil,fluff, and cake for our animal feeds. Zambia loses out big time. So people let us be on the look out and report these daylight thefts. In the meantime jobs are lost in petauke and created in south africa

  8. My friend in SA bought a suit from the united kingdom. He ended up paying double. The reason south africa did that is that they are protecting the local industry. C’mon you cant be importing cooking oil. Good one GRZ.

  9. This is what you get when you put myopic leaders like Bo Lubinda whose exposure of business is running a ka bar in Chilenje. If we let dull leaders like ministers make such directives we will never move forward…the best way round this issue was to increase duty on foreign cooking oil to discourage imports and not cut off the revenue from duty and then completely remove duty on brand new oil refining , labeling, plastic bottling equipment to encourage our local oil manufacturing firms to re-equip and innovation.

    We will see a lot of these impounding of trucks and the only people who will benefit from these are corrupt ZRA officials and half of these product will make their way into shops of our towns with us tax payer losing out.

  10. The cooking oil producers in Zambia should also be refining the cooking oil properly. Zambian products and yet their oils are smelly. Especially amanita and some people are allergic to soya beans. Govt should put up quality controls instead of just banning the import of goods without proper assessment. Ni chi dilu chabe ichi

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