Pault retweeted
The Uganda Revenue Authority needs to invest more in helping businesses to succeed.
From biblical times, the taxman Zacchaeus was not liked. The business of collecting taxes is not easy. I really understand this.
Nevertheless, over the years, and more so recently, there seems to be a shrill yet loud voice across the business community complaining about URA’s aggressiveness. Some say that URA behaves as if they don’t want businesses to exist, survive, or thrive! This would be strange because without businesses, what would be the business of URA? Of course, there are cases—and many cases—where some in the business community want to game the system!
I think there is a middle ground that can be found where businesses would be happy to comply and have their service expectations met. One businessman told me that a URA staff member (relationship manager) slapped a tax assessment on his business with strange, astronomical and mountain amounts that would bankrupt everything he has worked for and lived for.
“The procedure to navigate the assessment is cumbersome and requires hours of dealing with URA officials at the headquarters who show you that you need them more than they need you!”
Of course, I have met some great people and leaders at URA—but there seems to be an anti-business and anti-people tendency creeping in at URA. It can change. 🙏🏿 @URAuganda @URA_CG
The Kayanjas are not doing there brand any good at the moment. The Gashumbas on the other hand have had their lives in the spotlight for a long time. They don't care and they have nothing to lose.
Pault retweeted
There is an unpublished dossier about fake miracles and fake pastors that @observerug founder John Kevin Aliro left behind before his death in November 2005.
Oba tukolere abantu?!
Pault retweeted
You asked for "factual exactitude"? Let’s look at the UBOS Census 2024 and MEMD data for the very country you serve as Energy Minister:
93.1% of Ugandan households rely on biomass (firewood/charcoal) for cooking. Less than 3% cook using electricity or gas.
National grid coverage sits at just 25.3%. In your own constituency, Nebbi District, grid connection drops to a dismal 4.1% in West Nile, leaving, 95% of households dependent on firewood and charcoal!
As a First-Class Development Studies graduate and Minister, answering the LOP with hypothetical "alternative energy" options while pushing a charcoal ban/regulation before rural infrastructure or grid subsidies exist isn't a technical answer, it's administrative delusion.
Hiding behind parliamentary procedures doesn't change the fact that your policies remain completely detached from the daily realities of mothers in Nebbi and across Uganda.
Learn to listen to citizens without arrogance!
Pault retweeted
Ugandan newspapers: 50 million people- what is your circulation? Do you wonder why? Page after page, your stories focus on the affluent and influential. The detachment is palpable. In fact, it's like an insurmountable, tall wall.
And no, features about a pastor, a successful marriage, a specialist doctor, or an upcoming artiste don't connect with the ordinary person.
You may ask: Why should we write about people who can't afford the newspaper? The answer is simple: they are the vast majority of our population. They are the impoverished subsistence farmers, teachers, builders, boda riders, single mothers, abandoned children, cattle herders, fishermen, students without school fees. Impoverished, all of them. One medical bill away from bankruptcy. Connect your papers to our reality.
At least connect each story to the majority of people it affects. You will uncover so much ignorance and a lack of information at the grassroots level. Your duty is to educate. Do your job.
Elitist detachment. Has to stop.
#JustSaying
Pault retweeted
There is something fundamentally wrong when Ugandans earn in shillings, trade largely in shillings, pay taxes in shillings but are increasingly required to pay rent in US dollars.
Why should an ordinary tenant or local business carry the landlord’s foreign-exchange risk?
Every time the shilling depreciates, dollar-denominated rent effectively increases overnight, while salaries and business revenues remain largely unchanged. This quietly erodes disposable income, increases operating costs and eventually pushes up the prices of goods and services.
This creeping dollarisation of Uganda’s domestic economy deserves serious policy debate.
The Uganda shilling is our national currency. If an apartment, office or shop is located in Uganda and generates income from Ugandans, there is a strong economic case for rents to be quoted and settled in shillings.
We cannot strengthen confidence in our currency while progressively pricing everyday life in somebody else’s currency.
#Uganda #Economy #CostOfLiving #UgandaShilling
Pault retweeted
A very serious & immediate conversation must be had about how doing business in this country has become almost impossible for law abiding citizens. It now feels like only foreign investors with different skin colour and locally born & raised thieves can manage to start & run businesses in Uganda.
There is no successful business person who isn’t cutting corners or doing illegal things to stay in business. None! In Uganda it’s now officially impossible to operate a business and stay afloat when you’re doing the right thing.
The barriers to entry are way too many and even when you somehow struggle & open, you’re going to be driven into the ground by hurdles left right & center. Everyday there is a fresh problem for you to deal with.
If it isn’t the paperwork that will discourage you - from just registering your business to opening a bank account or even acquiring financing, it’s the running of the business that will finish you - rent is through the roof, electricity is expensive & unreliable and everyday you open your doors there is a robber planning to clean out your stock.
And if somehow those don’t finish you, the government will make sure of it by sending URA, KCCA, Police, your LC1, & all kinds of institutions to squeeze every little shilling out of you. Everyone is looking at your little business as their source of quick money.
How is a Ugandan supposed to do business when the environment is this harsh?
Everyday that passes you hear sad stories of people closing their businesses because the environment has totally failed them. Tears are being shed left, right & center, livelihoods ruined, all because the business environment is not conducive.
These are the pertinent issues people at the top should be focusing on. The country is slowly dying and it’s being killed by a regime that shouts about the importance of the private sector but quietly suffocates that same private sector at any opportunity.
This won’t end well.
This one never needed R2. It was a KO.
Pault retweeted
We rarely seek to understand the conditions and inner feelings of men in uniform beyond the surface.
Listen to former Amin's soldiers interviewed in Kampala in 1979.
I will not write the conclusions you want to read.
Pault retweeted
"I have seen people speak English, who are dangerously stupid" - Gen. @otafiire_k
😬
Uganda's currency is expected to fall further over the next week to Thursday after hitting its weakest-ever level against the dollar, those of Zambia and Ghana may also be under pressure, and Kenya's is expected to remain stable, traders said. reuters.com/world/africa/afr…
Pault retweeted
Yes, two wrongs don’t make a right. But a person who is in the habit of insulting others, calling them imbeciles, baboons, fat, ugly, clowns, stupid … should be the last to take offence about being insulted. The same supporters who find no fault with his insults are now allover the place condemning Aloikin for insulting!!!