By Jumah Kakomo
As one of the strategies to ensure effective service delivery and raising revenue across the country, Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) on Wednesday met Kampala metropolitan area business community
The meeting was held at Uganda revenue authority headquarters Nakawa division Kampala chaired by the commissioner customs Abel Kagumire on behalf of the commissioner General John Rusoke Musinguzi.
The meeting was also attended by various business community leaders who included Kampala arcades traders associations led by Godfrey Katongole, and the new generation traders association led by John Kabanda.
In the meeting leaders of the business community raised various serious concerns affecting to the effect of forcing some of the constituents out of the business.
KATA boss Godfrey Katongole said that the traders importing rice from Kenya and Tanzania face a lot of unnecessary hardship from URA which greatly affects the importation of the same from the two countries with a claim that rice is rebuked.
“URA hinders our rice from entering Uganda on the ground that we must wait for an approval machine which is not available in Uganda.We don’t know when it will be brought because this make a lot of losses, ” Katongole said.
Katongole, also expressed dismay over the authority officials who mistreat them and seize their goods on grounds that they don’t comply with the rules and regulations yet most of the time URA doesn’t sensitize them on initiatives which are always put in place regarding revenue adding that some of the online services are too slow.
John Kabanda also expressed concerns over URA’s move to scrap off the bus terminal process of clearing goods and replace it with the DPC process which they assert is more costly to the traders.
According to Kabanda “DPC process is used by those who import from China, UAE, Turkey among others whereas the terminal bus process is used by those who import from the East African countries like Kenya, Tanzania“ Kabanda said.
In the same meeting leaders also asked URA to regularly hold tax education engagement with traders to address the information gap that could be hindering their compliance before committing to provide URA with information regarding URA officials who mistreat them.
Abel Kagumire, URA Commissioner Customs expressed consternation over the low levels of compliance by traders saying that despite the technology that is always established by URA to improve revenue collections and effective service delivery; traders have failed to adhere to revenues rules and regulations which he says is a stumbling block to meeting the Authority’s target at times.
Kagumire cited various reasons why some times traders take long to be cleared which includes delay in exposing declaration and response to query by clearing agents among others,
He however, appealed to the traders to always be swift prior and during clearance.
“Let us join hands and help each other to achieve our goal since it is the only way to go,” Kagumire said.
