President Kaguta Museveni has created the State House Revenue Intelligence and Strategic Operations Unit to do an oversight on Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) operations and fight corruption within the tax administration system.
The President has also appointed Mr. David Kalemera as a Senior Presidential Advisor and Head of the Unit.
The creation of the unit will help the Government close revenue leakages and boost tax collection, according to a statement from State House on Friday.
The President seeks to iron out tax issues that came to the fire during his meeting with city traders over EFRIS.
While he endorsed EFRIS, he tasked URA to improve their relations with traders, with the President implying that the taxman was being hard on traders during implementation of the system.
In April 2021, Museveni refused to congratulate Uganda Revenue Authority on its 30-year- anniversary, citing poor performance, arrogance and persistent corruption at the tax body.
The President who was the chief guest at the URA thanks giving ceremony in Kampala described thieves as “the Judases” and the honest group as “Josephs”, asked the Commissioner General, Mr John Musinguzi Rujoki to eradicate corruption at URA.
Judas Iscariot is best known as the man who betrayed Jesus. Though he was one of the 12 disciples, he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, leading to Jesus’ arrest.
“I have seen you have been congratulating yourself, your minister of finance, Matia Kasaija has also congratulated you. But I didn’t not, I was here not even clapping because I know the story of URA,” President Museveni said.
“The performance of the country’s revenue collection can be gauged by a universal yardstick, the GDP tax ratio. If our GDP is US$44 billion our budget now is 40 trillion. If you collect 20% of the GDP you get almost enough money to finance the budget.”
Tax to GDP ratio is a reflection of how much of a country’s output goes to government in form of tax receipts.
President Museveni who was accompanied by the First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports Janet Kataha Museveni, pointed out that the revenue collected today of Shs19 trillion is far below the needed funds to finance the country’s budget, leading to the tendency of borrowing internally and externally.
He noted that the leakage was caused by those entrusted with the duty to diligently collect revenue that they divert to their pockets through corruption.
Mr. Museveni narrated the background of URA in which he noted that from its inception the tax GDP was 4 per cent that gradually moved to 10 per cent after some reorganization of the tax institution and has now stagnated between 11 and 13 per cent due to embezzlement of revenue collections.
The NRM leader explained that the hemorrhage in tax collection is mainly rampant at the border points where goods brought into the country are either under or falsely declared due to absence of scanners causing heavy losses in revenue collection.
“The problem with URA is arrogance. You try to guide them but they don’t act. Scanners or X-ray machines will eliminate smuggling of goods. Modern technology simplifies work but my people have been avoiding this technology for reasons best known to them,’ Mr Museveni said.
