The Commissioner General of the National Revenue Authority Ibrahim Brima Swaray, has today Wednesday 30th August 2023 commenced a series of dialogues with members of the Business Community at Sierra Palms Resort Lumley Beach in Freetown.

The dialogue is the commissioner’s first official engagement with the business community since his appointment by President Bio a month ago.

Swaray tactfully articulated his intentions to remove the barriers of collaboration between the NRA and the Business Community, expressing his desire to listen to the concerns of the Business Community to meet their expectations by the law.

“I have been charged with the responsibility of doing a job that thrives on the use of data which you all have but has refused to give to me, a case in point is the refusal to input sales in the GST machine which is impeding revenue generation efforts”.

He said one of the reasons why he called the meeting is to announce an open door policy, where he will engage on the way forward with the business community on compliance.

During the engagement, issues were highlighted by the business people, and prominent among the issues were the Timely release of containers to avoid demurrage, Equity stating that the NRA to increase the tax base to reduce the burden on the current taxpayers, Accessing tax credit returns should be a top priority for the NRA, and Effective Communication between the NRA and taxpayers.

Mr. Swaray promised to address these issues as soon as possible and encouraged the business community to work with him to generate the much-needed revenue to service government programs in Sierra Leone.