UNDP Jobs - 51081- International Consultant for Ministry of Finance -

International Consultant for Ministry of Finance - Inland Revenue Department

Location :

UNDP Asmara, ERITREA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

17-Nov-2014

Application Deadline :

10-Nov-14 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

Two Months

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

Two Month

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

During 2013, Eritrea witnessed important development changes. The signature of the Strategic Partnership Cooperation Framework 2013 – 2016 (SPCF) and implementation of related action plans. Government facilitation and participation in key international events & observances (e.g. the UN Day) after considerable period of inactivity; the Government delegation to the UN General Assembly actively sought and engaged in high-level side meetings as a sign of a new approach to UN- GOSE relationship. At the invitation of GoSE, the UNDG-DESA High-Level Mission visited Eritrea and held high level meetings, including with the President. Furthermore, the GoSE submitted its second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) report, an important commitment to the implementation of the recommendations of the UPR on human rights. These developments are seen as positive indicators for confidence building between the UN and the government and an important and much needed platform for the UN and UNDP in particular to strengthen development cooperation.

On the economy side, real GDP growth was estimated at 7 percent up from 6.3% in 2012; annual inflation increased to 12.5% from 12%, mainly due to high world food prices, a drop in crop output caused by poor rains, and accommodative monetary policy pursued by the country’s monetary authorities. Improvement in economic growth is attributed to an increase in investment in the mining (African Economic Outlook, 2014). Government has called for Public-private Partnerships to seize existing investment opportunities in the economy although this is still at small scale. Foreign currency regime has been relaxed with Proclamation No.173/2013, which allows institutions and individuals to open foreign-currency deposits, although this issue still requires monitoring for improvement.

Ensuring food security is an important goal for Eritrea’s development programmers. However, Government reports indicate that poor harvests were realized in 2013, and yet 80% of the population depends on rain-fed subsistence farming and pastoralism for livelihoods. In this regard, the country’s decision to participate in the second phase of the Drought Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Program in 2013 has the potential to improve the livelihoods of the majority of the population, particularly those in rural areas.( the program is not signed or started and has to be revised. Too early to conclude) With support from UNDP and other partners, Government has also embarked on constructing micro dams, terracing and afforestation to control and contain environmental degradation and effects of climate change and improve agricultural outputs and productivity.

Eritrean Population and Health Survey (EPHS) Report 2010 was validated and disseminated in 2013, another much welcomed development considering the very limited access to up-to-date data. The report indicates significant progress made in attaining MDGs 4, 5 and 6. The country is heading towards certification of polio-free State and pre-elimination stage of malaria. HIV prevalence rate is below 1% (0.93%). Overall, some improvements have been made in the education and health sectors, but challenges remain, especially in achieving the Poverty and Universal Primary Education MDGs.

The above positive trends notwithstanding, the country continues to face challenges as a result of extensive drought, occasional volcano eruption and floods, with the arid areas of Eritrea having the highest incidence of poverty and extreme poverty. Prices of most market commodities, including staple grains, pulses, and animal feed are rising annually, leading to growing incidents of malnutrition especially in children. The continued UN sanctions, the unresolved border conflict with Ethiopia, human trafficking and the mandate of the special rapporteur continue continues to limit government’s ability to respond to building community resilience, economic recovery and development. Further, the resultant marginalization of this country in terms of development assistance represented by a diminished donor base is a huge challenge to most development interventions. In general the country continues to experience, high levels of poverty, youth unemployment, food insufficiency, low levels of education and limited capacity of public institutions and systems. In such a complex and politically sensitive development context, it’s imperative that the UNDP Eritrea CO strategically positions its self to take advantage of the emerging opportunities for programming, while at the same time managing the high expectations without compromising its established partnership with Government as a capable and impartial partner.

The Ministry of Finance of the Government of State of Eritrea is one of the important executive organs of the Government.It is mandated to mobilize, control and administer the country’s financial resources and act as a custodian of Government property. At present the organizational structure of the Ministry consists of the Minister’s office and five functional departments.

The five departments are:

Administration and Finance Department (AFD);
Budget and Fiscal Planning Department (BFPD);
Treasury Department (TD);
Inland Revenue Department (IRD);
Customs Department (CD).

The vision of the ministry is to become a driving force for socio economic development in the country.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Inland Revenue Department commonly called in short as IRD is one of the departments of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) of Eritrea that is granted the authority to collect tax from individuals, small businesses, companies and organizations. To facilitate the process of collection of tax currently the IRD is using a software system called ERITAS developed by the Eritrea institute of technology here on after called as (EIT) in 2011. ERITAS, as its name indicates as Eritrea integrated tax administration system, was supposedly to integrate previous systems and supporting systems outside IRD in to the new system and facilitates tax collection but at current it is not the case. Some of the drawbacks are:-

Since data migration isn’t done yet from the system used before 2011 called as TAS, DIS, and, RCS. It is difficult to integrate data used prior to 2011 with the current system ERITAS and data redundancy usually delays the collection of tax.

Due to the lack of implementing data replication, the tax collection process is done from ONLY one data center (LTO). Any failure to this center would cause interruption to all branches.

Currently, the system is working ONLY in the central region.

The system has no connection to the systems of other departments of the Ministry which have inter-connected functionality.

Some crucial editing is impossible at this time like license number, wrongly paid receipts.

Instead of calculating the tax according to the declaration date the system forces the payment to be made in that specific time; this brings unnecessary adjustments in the tax payment process.

Thus, upgrading and expanding the ERITAS system software adding the gaps could substantially reduce processing time, collection of revenue and the customer satisfaction to the services given by the department.

As the department intends to embark on expanding the system to other regions of the country MOF’s next strategic period it is quite obvious that the expansion of the ERITAS system is imminent.

Hence, this assignment will be field based work in Asmara for a period of 2 months.

This assignment will have the following scope of work:

Analyze and review the existing ERITAS system software programme and identify all gaps in its functionality with respect to the collection of tax according to the laws and regulations of the IRD;
Based on the results analysis ,design and develop a second version ERITAS software program that is bug free to the functionality of IRD: a. In Supporting data migration from older version.

Other Regions can use it to the best satisfaction of customers that reside in other cities other than the capital.

Reducing the process of payment time tken by the current system.

Upon reching the golal's listed in no. 2 prepare the frame work for the gol of reaching the MOF's next strategic plan.

Inorder to strengthen the department's tax collection efficiency by closing the gaps in IT and office equipment including pc, printers and other computer accessories are required and more importantly empowering the IT staffs by giving more trainin and exposure to the new technologies.

Competencies

Strong expertise in Inland Revenue policies, procedures and systems;
Strong expertize in designing and developing system software related to Inland Revenue;
Strong expertise in preparing training materials;
Maturity and confidence in dealing with senior members of national institutions;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
Excellent written communication skills, with analytic capacity and ability to synthesize relevant collected data and findings for the development of quality software;
Excellent coordination skills and result oriented collaboration other national level consultants;
Excellent communication (both oral and written) and partnership building skills with multi-dimension partners;
Computer proficiency.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Advanced degree and/ or professional qualification in Information Management System, economics, accounting or public finance;

Experience:

At least 10 years of professional experience with public finance accounting, inland review tax administration in MoF or equivalent institutions;
Experience in designing and implementing tax administration systems and processes;
Experience in designing/preparing SOPs in tax administration, preparing procedures manual.

Language:

Fluency in English..