URA Decries Shs55bn Budget Cuts
The Uganda Revenue Authority has decried huge budget cuts amounting to Shs55.73Bn as the entity faces a high Domestic Revenue Collection target of Shs31.574Trn to finance the 2024/25 national budget.
Appearing before the parliamentary committee of finance, Henry Musasizi the Minister of State for Finance revealed that for the coming 2024/25 financial year, URA is expected to suffer a budget cut of Shs55.73Bn due to the failure to utilize its wages for two years in a row.
Documents tabled before Parliament indicate that in 2024/25, URA’s approved budget is to the tune of Shs564.26Bn of which, Shs197.77Bn is for wage expenditure, while Shs321.17Bn is for non-wage expenses while only Shs45.32Bn is for development expenditures.
Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has requested Parliament for extra Shs169Bn to cater for the payment of wages of the newly recruited staff to improve efficiency in revenue collections.
John Musinguzi, Commissioner General, URA asked Parliament’s Finance Committee to reinstate the reduced wages reinstated and made a request for further funds to cover salaries of the newly recruited wages, saying the challenges that hampered the utilization of the earlier wage budgets have now been sorted.
Some MPs backed the proposal to have URA’s reduced wage bill reinstated like Agnes Apea (Amolatar DWR) who said, “If you really want more milk, I thought we should be giving more pastures. But this is an entity that the whole country is dependent on and we still go ahead and cut wage, at least if we were cutting something else, but not human resource that should be the one to help us enhance efficiency and collect for us more money.”
MPs wondered about the magic URA will use to collect this money given the dismal performance the Authority has recorded in the recent past, saying exaggerated revenue projections are what leads to budget shortfalls among Government entities.
In URA’s updated figures, the Commissioner General revealed that as of 31st March 2024, the Authority collected domestic taxes to the tune of Shs12.886Trn against a target of Shs19.003Trn, while international trade taxes collected amounted to only Shs7.051Trn against the target of Shs10.669Trn. the collections thus brought the total revenue collections to a tune of Shs19.937Trn against the target of Shs29.672Trn.
