By Africa 24 Parliamentary Reporter

The Deputy Speaker of Parliament  who doubles as the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Ibrahim Tawa Conteh, has disclosed that small and medium scale businesses (SMEs), are owing the state over 3.5 billion Leones.

The Committee, he said, has only recovered one billion leones so far.

Hon. Conteh assured that some business entities had made payment plans so that they could recover those monies.

On payment regarding mobile network operators and internet service providers, Hon. Conteh added that 10.5 Billion Old Leone had been recovered and had been paid into the Universal Access Development Funds.

He said for the transit account and machinery operations, a huge amount of money had also been paid into the Consolidated Revenue Funds (CRF).

The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Hon. Ibrahim Tawa Conteh made the statement Thursday 23rd August , 2024, at the Kenema District Council in the presence of the institutional heads.

He said in the space of three months, the PAC had recovered over 40 Billion old Leones in tax arrears for the auditing periods, 2021 and 2022 respectively.

The Chairman said that the committee had looked into issues such as Corporate Taxes, GST, PAYE and withholding taxes.

Relating to payments of GSTs, the chairman disclosed that the committee had looked at eleven tax payers and invited both the Ministry of Finance and National Revenue Authority (NRA) to assist with the inquiry process.

With this new strategy, Hon. Tawa Conteh said  a lot of money had been recovered by the  National Revenue Authority.