THE Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) has recorded a 25% revenue increase to $29,2 million for the first half of the year attributed to the licensing blitz nationwide to force motorists to be compliant.
BY TARISAI MANDIZHA
In the same period last year, Zinara collected $22,7 million. In emailed responses to NewsDay, board chairperson Albert Mugabe said Zinara had made positive initiatives to ensure maximum collection of vehicle licensing revenue whereby over 70% of the vehicles on its database were compliant.
“We embarked on a vehicle licensing blitz nationwide which is aimed at encouraging licensing defaulters to be compliant. To this extent, our computerised vehicle database has increased to 675 000, and about 70% of these vehicles in our system are licensed and compliant,” he said.
Zinara is a government department under the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development with a mandate to maintain the country’s roads including the major highways.
A report by Auditor-General Mildred Chiri showed that corporate governance at the parastatal had broken down and senior managers paid themselves hefty monthly allowances. These included a $9 000 holiday allowance. The allowances were paid outside the payroll and thus prejudiced the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority of revenue flows to the tax collector.
Chiri said weak control environments existed at Zinara citing payments amounting to $4 157 937 which were not supported by authorised vouchers.
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Zinara was in 2012 appointed the collector of vehicle licence fees after government ruled that local authorities were failing to put to good use funds they collected. It also collects toll fees that were introduced in 2009.
In 2013, Zinara facilitated the establishment of the country’s first toll plaza in Bulawayo. The toll plaza was commissioned on the April 10 2013, about 16 km from Bulawayo.
Zimbabwe requires $5 billion to rehabilitate its road network, but with recurrent expenditure accounting for nearly 80% of total revenue and worsened by an external debt of over $6 billion, government is unable to close the funding gap.
