The British American Tobacco team led by Chris Achola, Cluster Head BAT East and Southern Africa recently met with URA to identify ways on curbing illicit trade in cigarettes in the East African region.

During the meeting held at URA headquarters, Nakawa BAT proposed different ways through which to curb the vice that include public destruction of all seized cigarettes, enforcement of the labelling requirements, implementation of Digital Tax Stamps (DTS) and enhancement of manufacturing and supply chain controls to curtail tax leakages.

Achola highlighted that the illicit trade in cigarettes has grown to 34.1% in Quarter 2 2023 from 15.8% in Q4 2019, saying, “In Uganda, we now have 34% incidence of illicit trade, which means one out of every three cigarettes smoked in Uganda is duty not paid, or is sold here illegally.”

He noted that this increase is alarming and calls for total attention from URA.

Commissioner General John R. Musinguzi on the other hand, commended the BAT team for the proposals in curbing illicit trade in cigarettes and pledged commitment to restrain the vice.

“We are concerned about revenue leakage and it came to our notice that the increase in smuggling of cigarettes is affecting you and our revenues,” he said.

He revealed that URA will very soon destruct all the seized cigarettes held at Nakawa, saying, “We shall place punitive penalties on whoever is caught with smuggled cigarettes so as to curtail the illicit trade in cigarettes.”

Musinguzi said that URA will engage the stakeholders in the manufacturing and supply chain of cigarettes before enforcement is implemented. He called on the URA enforcement team to impound all vehicles found transporting smuggled and forfeit them to State in a move to curb illicit trade in cigarettes.

Godson Mwesigye, the Assistant Commissioner Enforcement noted that URA will request manufactures of cigarettes in Uganda to batch the cigarette Bombas and provide URA with the batch numbers so as to curtail the illicit trade and further noted that URA will implement the track and trace solution in DTS.

The BAT team also applauded URA enforcement teams for the efforts in impounding smuggled cigarettes, requesting for collaboration to find a solution to the vice.

By Kamugisha Kabahweza Allan