EU ambassador tours SRC Customs facilities |01 July 2023

•           Gets feedback on excise tax module and e-manifest systems

The European Union’s ambassador to Seychelles, Vincent Degert, accompanied by his delegates and protocol officers from the department of Foreign Affairs and representatives of the Seychelles Revenue Commission yesterday afternoon toured a number of customs facilities involved in the excise tax module and e-manifest system project.

The project is in support of Seychelles’ implementation of the Current Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union whereby they have implemented the automatic system that will help SRC and associates alike by facilitating the input of information directly from the source without any human intervention.

The announcement of the roll-out of the new system was done last year; this includes the tax measuring system and the focused clearance system.

The ambassador first met with the Excise team at the Inland Revenue, Providence where he was briefed on the processes and journey after the implementation of the system which was installed on June 1. They then visited the the Almalgated Tobacco building at Pointe Larue, which is an excise manufacturer where Mr Degert met the managing director. Next location was the airport where they visited the Manifest Unit, the Air Seychelles cargo and the Fedex express courier.

Ambassador Degert expressed his satisfactory remarks to the staff who have worked to implement the system in their workplace.

“Today I wanted to see how the process is going and if everything is functioning, and also if the officers are well trained and have a good knowledge on how to implement these two systems. And I have observed that everything is in fact working properly and the officers themselves are well trained,” he said.

He explained that this will improve the capacity of the state of Seychelles with regard to taxation and to retrieve the tax from the companies.

He stated there will be further monitoring of the systems as the full roll-out of the project is in mid 2024 and that for now they were collecting feedback and adjusting certain issues which they had noticed.

The director of Inland Revenue, Cindy Blakemore, said it was a pleasure to meet the EU ambassador, the main donor of their new system, which aims to assist customs with monitoring and proper enforcement of the excise tax act.

“This system provides great benefits for Seychelles, taking in consideration that we can monitor raw materials being stored and the movement to productions, and to the finished goods. It helps us to have the real life data and provides us with more tangible information,” she said.

Simone Didon, the acting director of the Airport cargo, said that she showed the ambassador the e-manifest system which was launched since March 18, 2023. “It is about getting data from the source directly, which is the airline, everything will be done automatically and forwarded right after a flight has departed. So we get all manifest information in our system. It allows the process to be done faster,” she added.

The accompanying photos show highlights of Ambassador Degert’s visit to the various SRC Customs facilities.

Diane Larame

Photos by Louis Toussaint