URA shuts down six service centres in Kampala

Move to save taxman Shs3.8bn in rental and administrative costs

Kampala, Uganda | ISAAC KHISA | 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 effective next year includes; 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.

URA said on its twitter account that the new building will provide a one-stop-center for all URA services while cutting down on revenue administration costs.

URA is said to have been incurring approx.Shs3.8bn annually as rent and other administrative expenses.

However, the taxman has also opened five new service locations at Finance Trust Bank (Katwe branch), DTB at Ham Shopping Ground, Nakivubo and Bwaise branches and Post Bank and United Bank for Africa on William Street, to assist in managing domestic taxes.

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.

Prior to its extension, the Shs139bn URA Tower was set for completion in August this year. It is now the tallest building in Kampala with 22 floors divided into four podiums and 18 tower floors totaling to 26,021 square metres.

Pearl of Africa Hotel and Crested Towers have 20 floors while Mapera House and Uganda House have 19 and 16 floors, respectively.

Constructed by Ms Seyani Brothers & Co. (U) Ltd as the contractor, the office complex will also provide for a car parking structure for 360 cars and surface parking for 710 vehicles.

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 Saloon.

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

The building is also designed to be green with an Intelligent Building Management System (BMS) and other ICT innovations including security access control, lighting, water, fire-fighting and air conditioning services.

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.

Facilitating service integration

Ian Rumanyika, the spokesperson in the office of Commissioner General earlier told The Independent that 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,” he said.

The building will also improve the URA image and corporate brand in the public domain based on the fact that it has been the only revenue administration body in the EAC region without a befitting headquarters building.

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.