Museveni set to launch new URA tower, Uganda’s tallest

Tax body to save Shs3.8bn annually upon completion of the project

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The newly constructed 23-floor Uganda Revenue Authority headquarters at Nakawa that President Yoweri Museveni will commission today, is designed as a one-stop centre to boost tax collection.

Constructed in a record four years, the project will converge entire staff in Mukono, Kampala and Entebbe at the headquarter for more efficient service delivery. The office complex will facilitate a full integration of the back office service to support the self-service business model of e-transactions, under one roof, while maintaining only tax payers’ service centres.

“It is expected that URA will offer faster and better services to clients resulting from process integration while reducing administrative costs to the taxpayer and URA,” said Ian Rumanyika, the manager for public and corporate affairs in the Commissioner General’s office, recently.

He said the tower will provide modern office facilities that support URA’s current and future work methods of different departments. It will also improve security of vital URA computer and other records through provision of state-of-the-art and round the clock security.

This development comes as URA plans to collect an additional Shs1.9 trillion, to Shs 16.3 trillion this financial year, compared with the last financial year.

Construction of the Sh139 bn building started on Feb. 04, 2015 and was completed last month. It is fully funded by the Uganda government.

Benefits already 

Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) is expected to save at least Shs 3.8bn in annual rent upon completion of its office complex, Rumanyika revealed.

It is the tallest building in Kampala, comprising four podiums and 18 floors totalling up to 26,026 square metres of office space – making it 23 floors –  enought for URA to grow its staff comfortably.

The recently launched Pearl of Africa Hotel, Crested Towers and Mapeera House have 19 floors while Uganda House has 16 floors.

The office complex will also provide for a car parking structure for 360 cars and surface parking for 710 vehicles, making a trip to the headquarters friendly for tax payers.

The total area of the parking structure is 12,923 square metres with five levels for parking, with the sixth floor designed to house a crèche for breastfeeding staff, gym, Sauna and Unisex Salon.

It also has an auditorium or multipurpose high end conference hall for 300 people and mini-meeting rooms at every floor.

“The building is designed to be green with an Intelligent Building Management System (BMS) and other ICT innovations, making it a high performance building,” Rumanyika said, adding that BMS will manage all services like access control, lighting, water, security, firefighting, modern ICT network infrastructure and air conditioning.

In addition, the office complex has a central core atrium to enhance natural ventilation and minimise mechanical cooling of the building as well as house modern forensic and science laboratories that support tax investigations, customs and domestic taxes operations.

Who will occupy the building?

Already, Uganda Revenue Authority has shut down six service centres in Kampala as it relocates most of its services to the newly built URA Towers.

The service centres that have been relocated to the new office space in Nakawa are large taxpayer office, customs offices and legal services offices at Crested Towers, Tax investigations office in Kololo, Kampala North Office at Kubiri, Kampala South Office at Old Kampala, Kampala East Office at the Nakawa Business Park and the URA Training School on Lugogo Bypass.

It was Constructed by Ms Seyani Brothers & Co. (U) Ltd as the contractor.