Workshop on Review of the Resource Envelope for FY 2024/25

As part of the preparations for the budget for FY 2024/25,Ministry of Finance organized a 3-day consultative workshop to review the resource envelope for next FY at Speke Resort Munyonyo

The resource envelope is the sum of available resources for financing the Government budget in a given financial year.

This engagement  brought together all stakeholders in the revenue mobilization efforts including Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and Agencies that collect non-tax revenue.

Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury (PSST) Ramathan Ggoobi in his opening remarks at the workshop said the engagement was for sharing practical proposals beyond policy and identifying actionable areas to raise more revenue.

"The window for borrowing for the budget is closing every single year. There is no more commercial borrowing for the budget. The economy has expanded and we must move beyond words and collect more revenue," said the PSST.

The PSST said no country has developed by borrowing too much but by saving and collecting more revenue.

Ggoobi also noted that government is working on a 10-fold growth of the economy in 15 years.

" You have all my support to collect more revenue and we must collectively curb tax evasion and tax avoidance," said Ggoobi.

During the three days, the team discussed the revenue strategy for next FY, tax expenditure rationalization, improving tax administration efficiency, medium term debt strategy & own source revenue strategy among other issues.

The URA Commissioner General, John Musinguzi highlighted the measures to improve tax administrative efficiency.

URA is focused on mobilizing all the revenue required to sustain this country towards economic independence and Ministry of Finance has made it clear that URA has no room for any shortfalls in revenue collection going forward.

The Commissioner General noted the consistent growth in revenue by over 50.48% from Shs. 16,751.64 billion in FY 2019/20 to Shs.25,209.05 billion in FY 2022/23.

He urged government to continue investing in information Technology (IT) solutions and other innovations to maintain this momentum.

Musinguzi said although the tax to GDP ratio is 14% which is below the Sub-Saharan Africa average of 16%, URA target is to improve the tax to GDP ratio to between 18% to 20% in the short to medium term.

The tax register has grown by 154.96% from 1,594,118 in FY 2019/20 to 4,064,432 taxpayers by half year of FY 2023/24 due of issuance of instant TINs and use of third party data from Umeme, NWSC,NSSF, URSB and  KCCA.

Issues of concern which the of Uganda is addressing include: the large informal sector leading to a narrow tax base, poor tax paying culture, corruption, abuse of tax incentives by investors and integration of government systems among others.

PSST is presiding over this workshop and all key stakeholders in revenue mobilization are in the room and will be meeting here until tomorrow Saturday to agree on the resource envelope for FY 2024/25.

The PSST pledged total support to URA Uganda to get required human resource and also reiterated the need for standardization of data for planning and resource mobilization. He called for improvement of ability by URA Uganda to use big data to detect tax evasion and grow the tax register.