Safaricom Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Peter Ndegwa now says if a new proposal by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to monitor its systems is passed and adopted into law, then the telco will have no other option but to comply with it.

KRA, in the said draft proposal, wants to be allowed to set up their own systems to monitor the transactions of telcos so that they can remit taxes based on their transactions on a daily basis.

According to the authority’s Commissioner General Githii Mburu, they will no longer rely on tax declarations made by telcos, and will instead seek to deploy a similar system as in the betting industry that they say has seen collections from the sector increase by more than 50 per cent.

Mr. Ndegwa, speaking during an exclusive interview with Citizen TV on Thursday night, however stated that they will be looking forward to an engagement with the taxman before the proposal goes to Parliament for debate.

The Safaricom boss, albeit coyly, seemed to imply that the move would be unnecessary as the telecommunications giant has, over the past ten years, been certified as the country’s biggest tax payer.

“We’re a compliant corporate citizen. Last year Safaricom was declared the highest tax payer for the tenth year in succession, we paid Ksh.125 billion,” he stated.

“We have heard about the new draft proposals, which the KRA Commissioner General has spoken about...they’re still at the proposal stage, I’m sure we’ll be engaged as a critical stakeholder in this proposal. Of course we’ll always follow the law, if KRA has right to do certain things and are approved in the normal way through Parliament, I’m sure we’ll follow the law as we have always done.”

He added: “When budget proposals come in, we will normally engage with the key stakeholders including KRA to make sure that we understand the implication on our business, ad anything that we need to do to make sure that we meet the requirements that are being proposed to Parliament.”