Under invoicing costs State over USD 35 Bn – Minister
KPMG, Ganesh Wijenayeka, Sunethra Dharmakeerthi Registrar of Companies, Chairman, Advisory Commission on Company Law, Nihal Jayawardena, Minister. Dr. Ramesh Pathirana, Secretary, Ministry of Industries, Thilaka Jayasundara, Shyama Harshani, Sanjeewa Dissanayake and Tharanga Panditha Sundara from the Registrar of Companies. Picture by Nissanka Wijeratne
Sri Lanka has lost over USD 36.5 billion in nine years from 2008 to 2019 due to under invoicing, said the Minister of Plantations. Dr. Ramesh Pathirana at the Department of Company Registrar eRoC a web-based application software system, completion event.
He said that this was disclosed by the Global Financial Integrity Report recently and said that digitalization is the best way to prevent this happening in the future too.
The Minister also said that though there are over nearly 300,000 registered taxpayers only half of that number pay taxes correctly and this is now being addressed and plans are mooted to widen the tax net.
Minister Dr. Pathirana said that the Department of Registrar of Companies has set a shining example to other government entities by completing the entire registration of a company online. He said that this process was done with the assistance of KPMG and is an example for a government department and others too should follow this. “eRoC system changed the way people looked at Government service organizations.”
He said that these kinds of successful digitalization processes undertaken by the state sector also helped Sri Lanka to move up in the ‘Global Doing Business Index Ranking’ which is now not at a praiseworthy mark.
He disclosed that to provide a state land for a development project to the private sector one has to get minimum 26 approvals from several government bodies and this has to change.
The Minister recalled that one of the silver linings of the C-19 pandemic was the shift towards digital and this too is one of them.
“Sri Lankan have missed first, second and third industrial revelations but I am pleased to note that today people are falling in line with the fourth as there is a shift for Digital, AI and several other novel features.”
Project Manager KPMG, Ganesh Wijenayeka said they have now completed even the issuing of Company Registration certificate online making the process a 100% paperless endeavor. “We had some initial issues but with the new management this program became a reality and this registration process is similar to most of the developed countries’ systems.”
Total investment to implement the project was Rs. 36 million. Registrar of Companies, L. K. Sunethra Dharmakeerthi said that earlier even a person from Jaffna has to visit the Department of Registrar of Companies minimum two times and today it can be done from the applicant’s home.
She also said that the institution is a major profit making venture and will earn around Rs. 100 million in October.