Uganda Revenue Authority to Recruit 1,200 New Staff, Says URA Boss Musinguzi

The Uganda Revenue Authority is planning to hire 1,278 new staff to improve the authority’s efficiency.

This was revealed by John Musinguzi, Commissioner General of the URA, while appearing before the Finance Committee of Parliament on Wednesday.

He said the recruitment would require Shs 167bn.

In the financial year 2024/25, URA was allocated Shs619.989Bn, of which Shs253.495Bn will go towards the payment of wages.

Shs321.174Bn is earmarked for non-wage expenditure, while Shs45.320Bn will cover development expenditure.

“Uganda Revenue Authority is doing a structural review to improve the efficiency of the organisation to add on to the number of foot soldiers required to do this noble mandate to plug some of the revenue leakages, and this activity hadn’t happened for quite some time,” said Musinguzi.

“We propose that this recruitment can be spread over time because it would require about Shs167Bn,” he added.

Treasury Secretary Ramathan Ggoobi recently asked URA to explain the cause of the high staff departures and unveil a plan to address the current revenue deficits.

This was after URA registered a high staff turnover during the first four months of the financial year 2022–23.

The number of staff dropped from 3,203 to 3,151.

Targets

URA exceeded the revenue target for the financial year 2022/23 by collecting Shs 57.48 billion extra in the period July 2022 to June 2023, where they registered collections of Shs 25,209.05 billion against a target of Shs 25,151.57 billion, indicating a 100.23% performance.

This came five years later, since the tax body last surpassed its target in FY 2018–2019.

The taxman also posted a year-on-year growth of 16.4% compared to the past financial year, with an increase of Shs 3,551.04 billion compared to the year 2021/2022, which had a collection of Shs 21.062 trillion and a growth of 12.14%.

However, Ggoobi asked URA to explain a Shs 690 billion deficit registered in the first five months of the financial year 2023–24.

Ggoobi tasked the URA board to analyse and close the possible gaps leading to the deficit and prepare a response to all concerns raised.

He said URA must analyse the deductions and expenses claimed by multinational companies under the category of others, which is the biggest expense category, and the tendency of commercial banks to allow and transfer expenses incurred on the treasury bills account to the operating side.

He further observed that URA should look into interventions to tap into tax evaders hiding under informality.

Ggoobi was worried that if the gaps were not closed, the shortfall would reach one trillion Ugandan shillings by the end of the financial year 2023–24. He argued that the revenue shortfall was likely to cause a lot of budget financing constraints for the entire government and affect service delivery to the citizens.