Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) surpassed its 2024/25 revenue target, collecting over Rwf3,079 billion —exceeding projections by Rwf38 billion—thanks to stronger anti-smuggling enforcement, taxpayer incentives, and robust economic growth, officials announced on July 8.

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This was against the target of Rwf3,041 billion set for the year ended June 30. Although reconciliation was still underway for the fiscal year 2024/2025, RRA Commissioner General Ronald Niwenshuti on Tuesday, July 8, said the available data means the tax body exceeded the target by over Rwf38 billion, translating into an achievement of 101.3 per cent.

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Niwenshuti made the observation during a press conference on the tax administration’s compliance improvement plan. The tax collection performance also represents a growth of 16.7 per cent compared to the previous year, he said, observing that "we were able to, together with our partners, support the [national] budget to the tune of at least 52.9 per cent.”

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The key contributors to this performance, he said, include the awareness campaign to use the electronic billing machine (EBM) as well as consumers being able to request for invoices, the VAT reward incentive, and the activation of the voluntary disclosure incentive to taxpayers who came forward to pay all arrears they had not declared.

The VAT reward incentive where consumers are given 10 per cent of the VAT they pay, was introduced at the beginning of the financial year under review.

"[With] this reward, we managed to pay over a billion [Rwandan francs] back to the consumers. And the total beneficiaries of this VAT reward are 83,356,” he said.

According to information from RRA, up to 147,700 EBMs were distributed, up from 117,631 in the previous year, implying an increase of more than 25 per cent.

Another key factor that contributed to the 2024/25 performance, Niwenshuti said, is the activation of the voluntary disclosure incentive to taxpayers who came forward to pay all the arrears that they had not declared.

"Government waived for them penalties and interest, and this contributed Rwf18.1 billion and over 5,328 taxpayers participated,” he said.

In customs, he said "we have seen a growth of 21.9 per cent in importation, and that has also contributed to the collection of taxes in custom.”

As per RRA data, such expansion exceeded the earlier projected 16.3 per cent.

"Our measures to combat smuggling also enabled us to collect over Rwf14.6 billion,” he said, noting that RRA and partners managed to halt 1,430 cases of smuggling.

Smuggling was mainly observed in used clothes, alcoholic drinks, and cosmetics imports.

Again, he said, the tax body improved enforcement of unpaid revenues.

"We managed to collect over Rwf278 billion in tax arrears.

"Another factor that contributed to our tax collection is the economic expansion, where the country recorded an average growth of 8 per cent.”

For the new financial year, 2025-2026, which commenced on July 1, Niwenshuti said that RRA has been given an "ambitious revenue target” of Rwf3,628 billion from tax revenue and non-tax revenue, representing 53 per cent of the national budget, which is more than Rwf7 trillion.

Every year, he said, RRA has a compliance improvement plan that guides it to come up with relevant interventions to enable it to reach set targets.

"To do that and to achieve the target, we are focusing on the general improvement across the core aspects of the taxpayer obligation, which are: registration, filing, payment, complete and accurate reporting.”