MAPUTO– The Mozambican Tax Authority (AT) is sending 80 tax officials to attend a course to learn Mandarin to allow them to communicate more readily with Chinese businesses which are operating in Mozambique.
The three-month course is being conducted by the Confucius Institute at Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University, the body tasked with teaching Chinese culture and language. The tax officials concerned are those involved in collecting Value Added Tax (VAT) from Chinese companies.
The Tax Authority said in a media statement that the Mandarin studies would be extended to officials in other parts of the country in the near future.
At a ceremony at the opening of the course, Venancio Francisco, the Rax Authority’s General Director of Common Services, said over the last three years, China had become the country with most investments approved in Mozambique, and the great expansion of Chinese businesses posed challenges to the tax and Customs authorities, including in communication.
The training of the tax inspection teams seeks to respond to this challenge. Its fundamental goal is to endow the participants with communication skills in order to improve the relationship between the tax administration and taxpayers of Chinese nationality, Francisco said.
Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK