Progress made in non-tax revenue collection

The Government made solid progress in non-tax revenue collections in 2018, Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Charles Abel says.
Abel told the Leaders’ Summit yesterday that the declining trend in revenues in the years up to 2016 had now been clearly turned around.
“The reforms under the medium-term revenue strategy 2018 to 2022, underpinning this turnaround, have been successful and we will continue that strategy,” he said.
“We lifted our tax collection targets in the 2018 Budget.
“We finished 2018 with higher collections than even the supplementary budget targets.
“The men and women at the IRC (Internal Revenue Commission) and Customs need to be congratulated for their efforts, but those efforts need to be continued.”
Abel said the government continued to reform State agencies which resulted in strong collections through the Public Money Management Regularisation Act.
He said mining dividends were also coming through strongly.
With regards to the 2018 budget perimeters, Abel said his department was still finalising the figures.
“The preliminary budget deficit is likely to be a bit higher than the 2018 supplementary budget estimate,” he said. “That will have an impact on the debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio, but it will still remain in the 30 to 35 per cent compliance band that is prescribed in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
“We were able to fund most of our key expenditures including the tuition fee free (TFF) allocation, which was fully funded at 100 percent.”
Abel said other expenditures had achieved 99 per cent completion rate.