The Government's Electronic Services Portal collected for the Single Treasury Account, from January to September, more than 500 billion kwanzas in revenue from more than 70 public institutes and supervised bodies.
According to the Public Finance Information and Communication Technology Services (SETIC-FP), attached to the Ministry of Finance, the figures for 2021 represent, so far, more than double the revenue achieved in the entire year of 2020.
Last year, inflows in payment of fees and other emoluments were estimated at 291 billion. This performance of the bodies means that their own revenue, which until then was not accounted for due to dispersion in different units controlled by the State, already exceeds the financial allocations attributed by the National Treasury.
This information was disclosed at the Conference "The Age of ICT in Public Finance“opened yesterday (28/9) and closed today at the National School of Administration and Public Policies (ENAPP), in Luanda, where the Ministry of Finance and partners address the impact of digitization on State revenues.
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At the opening of the event, the Secretary of State for Budget and Public Investment, Aia Eza da Silva, said that Information and Communication Technologies are a trend that the State cannot escape. For the leader, everyone, in a way, and the State is no exception, tend to use the information and knowledge available increasingly disseminated to improve the quality of life.
"The State Administration cannot escape this trend. The State Administration, every day, realizes more and more of this importance of having technologies working in its favor. This is reflected in the 2018-2022 National Development Plan, summarized in the reduction of bureaucracy in access to the service, taking advantage of ICT to better respond to the needs of citizens“, exhorts Aia da Silva.
For the Secretary of State, ICTs aim to promote smart government and a way of providing service to citizens and economic operators. For that reason, he justifies, projects like “Simplifica”, adopted by the national Executive that year, are popular and fall so well, as they improve procedures. Aia Eza da Silva said that the General Tax Administration (AGT) is a pioneer, but not the only one in this field. With this, it recognizes that there is still a long way to go and that there are also very large barriers in terms of ICT.
"At AGT, one of the achievements is that we have already centralized the management of tax collection and completed the digitization of the three taxes, namely the Value Added Tax (VAT), the Special Consumption Tax (IEC) and the Tax on Motor Vehicles (IVM). So it was a great victory for us and for the citizen. This advance allowed for a 70 percent increase in the level of non-oil collection, through electronic channels, contributing to the digitization of revenue collection“, advances.
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On the other hand, Aia Eza da Silva said that the Citizen's Portal has revolutionized the way in which the smallest State revenue is collected, the way it is accounted for, the way it is reflected in the Single Treasury Account (CUT ) and how citizens were allowed to directly benefit from the small fees they pay at the local level.
"For example, today, when the citizen pays the market rate, he can also complain, because it must be there in order to be reflected in the improvement of conditions in the respective market. Therefore, these are small advances that at first sight are not very far-reaching, but in terms of revenues and in terms of public finances, they are advances compared to where we were five years ago“He explained.
A detail also put forward by the Secretary of State and which is reflected in the adoption of electronic contracting is that it was possible, for example, to save more than 100 billion kwanzas with the option of using this mechanism for the acquisition of State goods and services.
"We have a lot to be proud of with the Public Finance Information and Communication Technology Services (SETIC-FP)", said.
Despite all these advances, Aia Eza da Silva asks that the risks surrounding all of this not be ignored. “We suffered one of the biggest attacks in the country's history. So far we have not recovered everything. There are e-mails that we will never have access to again, there are works that were completely destroyed, but today we have the services up and running again”, he said.
