A Japanese official has urged South Sudan to improve its tax collection system to generate more non-oil revenues, a suggestion finance ministry seconds.

The Deputy Minister of Finance believes that proper management of public finance is important.

They spoke at an ongoing workshop in Juba on non-revenue collection and management Monday.

Higeru Hamano, who represented the Japanese embassy at the workshop in Juba on non-oil revenue collection, said tax is a very authentic source of government revenues.

“Revenue is a gift for the government and that is why Japan thinks that South Sudanese Government needs to improve its tax system to help South Sudan build its social infrastructure and deliver various social services,” Mr Hamano told the participants.

At the same occasion, the Deputy Minister of Finance, Mary Jervase, said there is a challenge of transparency in budget implementation.

She said there is a similar challenge in public finance management in South Sudan.

“The budget execution remains difficult and there are shortcomings in terms of transparency and its expected results,” Ms Jervase stressed.

“The Government must be accountable to its citizens and such accountability must be exercised through effective parliamentary control. Every minister at the state level is accountable to parliament.”

The training was organized by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning in collaboration with United Nations Development Program and the Government of Japan.

The resident representative for the United Nations Development Program says UNDP is helping in building a strategic financial management system for government institutions.

Evgene Owusu says UNDP will also engage stakeholders from the private sector, development partners and the civil society.

“We’d like to build partnership not only the government and state authorities at the local level, but also seek the engagement of the private sector, civil society organizations and development partners,” Mr Owusu stated.

He added: “As UNDP, we will continue to provide strategic policy advisory support to the state Government financial management system, we will support budgeting and development planning if we are to succeed in building a transparent financial management system at the state levels which I insist will lessen South Sudan’s reliance financial deficits and South Sudan’s dependency on aid and donor support in a step by step progressive manner.”

This training on how to generate non-oil revenues will end to tomorrow.

MPs from the states are participating in the training, which aims at providing skills to effectively and efficiently manage and raise nonoil revenues for development at the local levels.