Greetings

It is an honour to address yet another cohort of outstanding taxpayers and key stakeholders gathered here tonight. Congratulations upon achieving the various recognition awards tonight. You are increasingly making Uganda’s economy great. I appreciate each taxpayer for standing out and diligence in tax compliance.

To our outstanding taxpayers tonight, please know that we greatly appreciate your commitment towards making Uganda shine. We do not take you for granted.

We urge you to convert more taxpayers and business partners to be as diligent in their tax matters as you. This will ease tax collection and enable us invest more in improving revenue processes and systems, rather than having to enhance manpower to enforce on non-compliance.

Non-compliance in tax remains a critical issue that affects us all. As the Minister of Finance, it is my duty to ensure that our tax system is fair, efficient, and effective.

Unfortunately, we keep facing significant challenges in this regard. Despite numerous reminders and warnings, many businesses continue to evade taxes, underreport income, or fail to file returns altogether.

Let me be clear: tax evasion is a serious offense that undermines the very fabric of our economy. It deprives our government of much-needed revenue, which could be used to fund critical public services, infrastructure, and social programs.

Moreover, tax evasion creates an uneven playing field, where compliant businesses are placed at a disadvantage compared to those that cheat the system. This is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

I urge all businesses to take immediate action to ensure compliance with tax laws. Register for taxes and obtain the necessary licenses, file accurate and timely tax returns, and pay all taxes due, including VAT, income tax, and PAYE.

We will not hesitate to act upon those who fail to comply. We will work tirelessly to ensure that our tax system is fair, efficient, and effective.

In the spirit of celebration, Uganda has attained a number of development milestones because of relentless efforts from gallant taxpayers like each one of you.

Today, Uganda’s economy has expanded by 6.0% from UGX 183,004 billion to UGX 202,131 billion in financial Year 2023/24. This was made possible because of growth in the services, industry and agriculture, forestry & fishing sectors during the year. The impressive economic growth rate is higher than the Sub-Saharan Africa’s average of 3.8 percent, and the global average of 2.9 percent projected for the year 2024.

In spite of global economic instabilities, many of you taxpayers have diligently paid your taxes to enable delivery of key government programmes and services to the citizens.

We cannot forget the capitalisation boost the Parish Development Model has added to not only agriculture but also to other economic interventions seen in Uganda today. So far, over 1.165 million households had received PDM funds worth UGX 1.126 trillion as of May, 2024, and estimated to create about 2.5 million jobs.

There’s a general improvement in economic activity. The Composite Index of Economic Activity (CIEA) moved up by 1.02% to 165.03 in May 2024 from 163.36 in April 2024, a trend that has been maintained since the beginning of the year.

Government is always striving to improve the ease of doing business in Uganda. By June 2024, there were positive sentiments from the private sector where the Business Tendency Index (BTI) showed positivity and improvement. Most optimism is towards the construction sector followed by manufacturing, agriculture, and wholesale trade.

Uganda’s merchandise export earnings increased by 39.4% from USD 639.86 million in April 2024 to USD 891.97 million in May 2024. This increase was mainly driven by higher earnings from coffee and gold exports during the month.

I urge each one of us to embrace production of export worthy goods because this is where the money is. This is evident in the coffee sector today.

We know that government is running a UGX 72.136 trillion budget this financial year 2024/2025, of which UGX 31.574 trillion has to be collected internally to finance government to efficiently deliver services, infrastructure, and policies for economic empowerment of our country.

The Budget for FY 2024/25 is the last we are implementing in the Third National Development Plan (NDPIII), and also provides the foundation for implementing the Government’s strategy for expanding the size of our GDP from about USD 50 billion in FY2022/23 to USD 500 billion by the year 2040.

We are working towards “Full Monetisation of the Uganda’s Economy through Commercial Agriculture, Industrialisation, Expanding and Broadening Services, Digital Transformation and Market Access”. This will be achieved through key priority areas of;

1. Increased oil and gas activities;
2. Growth in exports, supported by the increase in regional trade in the EAC and COMESA, intra-Africa trade, and harnessing existing and new trading partners in the Middle East and Asia;

• Increase in tourism activities with investment in tourism infrastructure, branding and marketing;

1. Agro-industrialisation and light manufacturing supported by access to affordable credit through Uganda Development Bank (UDB), investments supported through the Parish Development Model, Small Business Recovery Fund, and Emyooga;
2. Private investment growth supported by Foreign Direct Investment, remittances and a stable macroeconomic environment;
3. Continued investment in industrial parks, construction and maintenance of roads and bridges; and

• Rehabilitation of the Metre Gauge Railway and commencement of the Standard Gauge Railway, expansion of ICT infrastructure, and provision of reliable and affordable electricity.

Government is also creating more formal jobs and related livelihoods through project-funded intervention such as GROW and INVITE Projects. For programmes like GROW, we want to directly benefit over 8,000 female-owned enterprises, 280,000 female entrepreneurs and 1.6 million indirect beneficiaries. Through the INVITE Project, another 200,000 new jobs are expected to be created from new investments.

We are serious about moving this country away from being regarded as impoverished to full monetization with expanded services, and full market access.

In the spirit of export promotion and import substitution, addition, I urge the business community to take up a number of the tax incentives from the recent tax amendments. For example, to boost local production, public safety and environmental sustainability, we exempted VAT on the supply of locally manufactured electric vehicles; the manufacturer of an electric vehicle, electric battery or electric vehicle charging equipment; the supply of electric vehicle charging equipment or supply of charging services of an electric vehicle; and the supply of cooking stoves that use fuel ethanol, assembled in Uganda, up to 30th June 2028.

The EFRIS system is here to also ease doing business and allow you the business owner to monitor how your workers are running your establishment in financial and tax terms. DTS, the digital tax stamps, are also meant to enhance standards and quality of our products. We need to strengthen some of these primary areas if we want to aggressively tap into global markets for our products.

Together, we can build a stronger, more prosperous economy for all Ugandans.

All government plans will only be achievable if you continuously remain committed to developing Uganda together. Fly the compliance flag higher and higher.

I wish you a great evening.

For God and My Country

HON. MATIA KASAIJA

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