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Inland Revenue Trade Unions want RAMIS replaced 

16 Mar 2021

The Inland Revenue Trade Unions Joint Committee has been lobbying the Government to replace the existing Revenue Administration and Management Information System (RAMIS) with comparatively cheaper Sri Lankan software, The Morning Business learns. Speaking to us, Inland Revenue Trade Unions Joint Committee Spokesperson stated that the request for replacement is due to the overall inefficiency of the current system, which is reportedly complicated and not user-friendly. “Also, as it is not flexible enough, and too complicated, the working hours of employees are wasted, because they are still not used to the system and its complexity,”  commented a spokesperson for the Inland Revenue Trade Unions Joint Committee. Moreover, they highlighted that despite a committee being appointed to oversee all issues with RAMIS, an effective solution was not offered immediately, due to the committee lacking IT knowledge. “Another point is that, although there is a committee, there was no department consultant from the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) who managed the system. The only consultant was in Singapore,” revealed the spokesperson. Consequently, recurring complaints from IRD workers flooded the committee, and caught the public’s attention due to local reports, resulting in this issue to be addressed by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 2021 Budget. The 2021 Budget stated that “Technical and legal provisions are to be introduced into the tax laws to strengthen the RAMIS”.  Furthermore, the RAMIS system was manufactured in Singapore. The Inland Revenue Trade Unions Joint Committee reports that the management information system cost the Government Rs. 9 billion when it was brought down to Sri Lanka in 2014. They further added that during the period that the Inland Revenue Act was introduced in 2017, the system could not be updated according to the legislation and amendments that this Act contained. In addition to this, it was also highlighted that the tasks allocated to the Inland Revenue Department from the assessment year in 2018 have still not been received through the RAMIS system. As a result, although it has been a total of three years, all the aforementioned changes are reportedly still being made. “We will only have to work on tasks for the present year, such as those in the 2021 Budget, after we've finished these past tasks. Present work gets delayed when this happens,” commented the spokesperson.  The Committee continued to mention its attempts to resolve this issue by raising this to the attention of the “RAMIS CO” committee, which comprises the IRD’s Commissioner General, Deputy Commissioner General, and other senior executives as members. “We want them to develop the system too, but I reckon they will charge an additional cost for development. However, we also prefer the Government buying another Sri Lankan-made system for a comparatively cheaper price,” noted the spokesperson. The spokesperson stressed that the possibility of Singapore charging an additional cost would be highly likely, regardless of the technical and legal provisions that the Prime Minister mentioned in the 2021 Budget. Additionally, the Committee noted that the RAMIS is a custom design from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) for the IRD. Thus, the possibility of auctioning the current system and utilising the income earned from the auction to purchase another local system comparatively cheaper is noted to be unlikely. However, they also highlighted that the system is working to some extent, but the most important tasks assigned to the Department cannot be carried out. On the other hand, it should be noted that several local reports surfaced in 2018 that claimed an illicit scheme was in operation within the IRD with the aim of weakening the RAMIS, which would cause irregularities and corruption in taxation.  Trade unions claimed that the suspects behind the attempt to weaken the electronic tax management system were a group of IRD officials who were involved in tax fraud, according to a state media report that dates back to 2018.

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