Lifting taxes on UN agencies is timely, but backlash was avoidable

The Minister of Finance and Planning Awow Daniel yesterday issued a ministerial order for tax exemptions on the United Nations agencies.

“The order that came into force on May 3, 2024, reads that all UN agencies, humanitarian organizations, and diplomatic missions in South Sudan shall be exempted from the payment of taxes and customs duties,” he noted.

“The ministerial order indicated that these are goods and services imported for humanitarian purposes or for the mentioned entities to carry out their activities in the country,” he added.

The minister further stated that “UNMISS-contracted companies to render service internally shall not be part of this exemption of taxes, charges, and fees on goods.”

“These companies are profit-making entities and are subject to applicable tax related to services provided per the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA),” he stated.

This was in response to the uproar by the embassies of Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States which had expressed serious concerns over the imposition of taxes on aid supplies.

The international community did not only raise the concerns but also warned that the move could affect the efforts of the UN agencies to advance the necessary help to the communities that are in need in South Sudan.

These aid agencies had said that they would be forced to scale down their operations knowing that such tax policies would inevitably affect their logistics.

This means that the response by the minister is timely and necessary as it is going to save the communities that depend on these agencies. In addition, it is worth noting that the government should have foreseen this circumstance and made things clear to the concerned authorities to spare such agencies. This would have prevented back and forth and saved the country’s image from the unnecessary stain in the eyes of the international community.