Uganda’s Mbarara District has made the decision to establish additional roadside markets in order to boost the amount of local revenue it brings in. The Mbarara District Council made the choice.
For the fiscal year 2023–2024, the council has budgeted 1.6 billion shillings for collection. But only 760 million shillings had been collected by the third quarter’s end.
The Mbarara District’s Chief Administrative Officer, David Muhwezi, made a statement at the presentation of the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024–2025. He said that a number of issues, including crop-damaging diseases like foot-and-mouth disease, protracted droughts, and other ailments, have made it difficult to collect local taxes.
Muhwezi also emphasized how the main district’s revenue had been impacted by the establishment of Town Councils and the authority they were granted over revenue collection. He urged the council members to locate possible locations for new markets, particularly roadside stands. The Mbarara District’s Chief Financial Officer, Julius Muganzi, revealed that the finance department has proposed fresh strategies to boost earnings for the fiscal year 2024–2025. These concepts include renting out undeveloped property and imposing fees on sale agreements for land transactions.
District Chairperson Didas Tabaro noted a number of obstacles to the collection of money. Despite being in a region known for cattle ranching, these include a lack of slaughterhouses, inadequate room for some markets, and inadequate market infrastructure. Tabaro stated that six of the ten weekly markets that the district had owned in the past were now run by recently elected town governments.
A proposed budget of thirty billion shillings for the upcoming fiscal year was presented by Simon Twashaba, the Secretary for Finance and Administration. He also predicted that local collection will total 1.9 billion shillings. Twashaba pleaded with councilors to examine and adopt the drafts in June in order to guarantee effective service provision to the public.
