A Research Report Submitted to Mzumbe University – Mbeya Campus College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Award of Bachelor Degree of Accounting and Finance (BAF-BS) of Mzumbe University.
Developing a strong system of internal control enables management to deal with rapidly changing economic and competitive environment, priorities and restructuring for the future growth. However, the Internal Control in organization improves the revenues collection. Specifically, the study was set in order to meet three objectives, namely; to evaluate the current institutional factors affecting revenue collection in LATRA-Iringa, to examine various internal control mechanisms employed by the LATRA to improve revenue collection, and to evaluate the effectiveness of internal control employed by LATRA Iringa.
To achieve these objectives, therefore the study employed a case study as research design. The study interviewed 50 respondents using questionnaire and interview guide. Ways to approach the respondents, the study employed purposive and convenience sampling methods. In addition, data were analyzed using descriptive Statistics.
The findings show that internal controls were available in the organization, and management is committed to the control system performance, and actively segregation of duties, job rotation and supervision of the activities by senior staff are available. Also the study revealed that systems are good enough for the efficiency of revenue collection. In addition to that, it was found that there was compliance of internal controls in relation to the revenue collection through public/private partnership and having responsible parties to monitor the compliance.
However it revealed that the internal audit department is not efficient, is understaffed, doesn’t conduct regular audit activities and doesn’t produce regular audit reports although the few reports produced by the internal audit department address weaknesses in the system. It was further revealed that there is continuous shortfall in revenue collection compared to the budget target.
Following these results, the study conclusion was that; the employed the effectiveness internal controls enough for it to collect targeted amount of revenue as supported by the study findings of clear separation of roles, supervision, and commitment of management in managing its institutional factors.