Eyebrows raised over Zimra tender

Source: Eyebrows raised over Zimra tender –Newsday Zimbabwe

THE Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) has reportedly awarded a US$4,6 million tender for the supply, delivery and installation of a fiscalisation back-end system to Norwegian firm, Norway Registers Development (NRD) ahead of local bidders.

One of the losing local bidders told NewsDay that the tender was shrouded in secrecy, and also claimed that locals were sidelined despite having proven that they had the capacity to deliver the same equipment in and around the African region.

Zimra, however, told NewsDay that the authority was still hunting for a suitable supplier.

In response to questions from NewsDay, Zimra said: “We take note of your inquiry and wish to advise you that the information you are requesting us to release is confidential. Suffice it to say, the process of procuring a suitable supplier is still underway and we will advise the public once all due diligence has been completed and a supplier has been engaged.”

Efforts to get a comment from the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe were fruitless.

Zimra describes fiscalisation as the capturing of tax data or information on sales using fiscal gadgets.

As businesses record their tax data and sales, the information is concurrently transmitted to the Zimra server and the data captured cannot be altered.

Zimbabwe tax authorities and Treasury have previously hailed fiscalisation for increasing tax collection and improving compliance.

Contacted for comment, NRD group chief marketing officer Jurate Venskeviciute-Buciene said: “Thank you so much for your e-mail and questions. I will check on the details with my colleagues and will be back with the answers by tomorrow.”

NRD Companies is a global information technology and consulting group of companies specialising in governance and economic digital infrastructural development. It is headquartered in Norway.

“Since our inception in 1995, we have built more than 150 state-of-the-art registries and information systems, and we have delivered other projects of all imaginable types across four continents and more than fifty countries worldwide. Over the years, we have expanded our offerings so as to secure maximum efficiency of the ecosystems we build, with solutions and services such as digital signature, digital platforms for the financial and retail sectors, information distribution, and other economic digital infrastructure solutions,” the company wrote on its website.

Its home markets are the Nordics and Baltics, as well as the frontier markets of sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia, with strategic growth focused in the related areas of digital platforms for State revenue collection, banking, digital licensing and digital documentation.

It has a number of units including a legal consulting unit, NRD East African, NRD Rwanda and NRD Systems.