What you need to know about new digital number plates

Owners or importers will be required to pay a total of 714,300 shillings for the digital registration plate, while replacing an old plate with a new one costs 150,000. 

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Monday, January 6, marked the rollout of the third phase of the Motor Vehicle Digital Registration Number Plates, targeting both private and public transport vehicles.

This category of vehicles has been divided into two with those entering the country for the first time registration (imports), to be processed at Malaba and Mutukula Border Entry Points for those coming from Kenya and Tanzania respectively.

Owners or importers of these will be required to pay a total of 714,300 shillings for the digital registration plate, while replacing an old plate with a new one costs 150,000.

The vehicle must be registered in the owner’s names for this migration. Motorcycle digital registration plates will cost 50,000 Shillings.

The Category of the direct imports (DIRECT IM4) of vehicles entering the region for the first time involves those that clear taxes at the points of entry of Mombasa in Kenya or Dar salaam in Tanzania. According to the Ministry of Works and Transport, this category “has the privilege of entering the country with a vehicle fitted with a digital registration plate along with a log book in hand.”

On clearing the taxes, the importers will then proceed to log onto the booking system (portal@itms_ug.com) immediately after the taxes are cleared. The second category is for the vehicles that are imported and taken bonded warehouses and then clear taxes later (IM7).

After clearing taxes and all assessments are done on the Uganda Revenue Authority portal, including those done by the Ministry of Works’, the client will then make a booking for the digital registration plate though portal@itms_ug.com.

The importer will then get a confirmation text after which, the client will choose which location and time for fitment of the registration plate. The fitting will then be brought to the chosen place.

The joint contractor, Joint Stock Company Global Security, is implementing the exercise also reachable on 0200420000 and Inquiries@mvr.go.ug.

The government, through the Ministry of Works and Transport has given current vehicle owners two-years to migrate to the new digital number plates regime, which has been developed under the Intelligent Transport Monitoring System (ITMS).

Susan Kataike, the Principle Communications Officer at the Ministry says that so far the first year of the exercise that targeted government vehicles, 2,143 government vehicles have been fitted with the new plates. In addition, the exercise that was rolled out to motorcycles in November last year, has so far covered 11,721 private and public motorcycles, especially for those newly imported or assembled.

The digital numbering system has been criticized by the public especially because it makes it harder to read or memorise, while those for government departments are hard to identify unlike the old system. A private vehicle number under the digital number plate system has seven characters arranged thus UA 001AA, or eight characters for a trailer T UA 001AA for a trailer and UMA 001AA for a motorcycle.

These differ slightly from the old or outgoing system UAA 001A. The most criticized, however, is the method given to government vehicles, where a ministry or agency is identified by two digits, unlike the old system which used distinct letters for each ministry or agency.

All government ministry vehicle numbers will be preceded by “UG” followed by a two-digit number to specify the ministry and a five-digit number for the vehicle, for example UG 32 00042, with 32 representing the Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Local Government vehicles are identified by the first two letters “LG” followed by the district number, instead of the “UG” which signifies “Central Government”.

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