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By Silindzelwe Nxumalo
Through the commitment made by the Eswatini Revenue Services (ERS) on April 6, 2022 their customer service KPI, the Net Promoter Score, jumped from less than 6.67 per cent in April 2022 to 49 per cent in March 2023.
ERS Commissioner General Brightwell Nkambule mentioned that in April 2022 they made a lot of commitments including committing to transitioning the Eswatini Revenue Authority to a Service organization. He said they undertook to provide 5-star service, digitalize tax and customs processes to make it easy to comply and they said they would educate their clients, so they understand their customs and tax obligations.
Nkambule stated that they had also committed to strengthening their relationship with their ecosystem partners and that implementing these commitments would shift their focus from enforcing customs and tax laws to facilitating trade and tax compliance.
“Implementing these commitments would improve public trust in the ERS and voluntary compliance. We then set out to introduce programs that sought to honor the commitments. We embarked on a countrywide customer service campaign to empower our officers on customer service skills,” he said.
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He said they then launched the Authorized Economic Operator with their SACU partners in May this year.
He mentioned that this program awards VIP status to qualifying traders so their goods were not subjected to intensive inspections on both sides of the border with South Africa.
“We’ve had two traders in this program in the last 5 years, today three have shown interest. We will see a 150 per cent growth,” he revealed.
Nkambule added that in July they introduced the self-service Tax Compliance Certificate system which was a system that enabled their compliant clients to generate their own TCC from the comfort of their homes or offices.
He said since July this year they had issued 10 700 TCCs from this system, and about 95 per cent were issued within 5 minutes to individual applicants.
“With the improvements in the TCC processes, we are happy to announce that in December 2022 the Minister of Finance gazetted amendments of TCC Regulations and expanded the scope of the TCC,” he said. The Commissioner General stated that the scope of the TCC had been expanded to include the renewal of trading licenses and cross-border transfer of funds.
