By Anslem Ojaru

Nebbi

Nebbi District Local Government together with SEATINI Uganda an organization that looks into issues of trade, physical and investment related policy and process converged in Arua city to review the existing Nebbi District local Revenue enhancement plan to focus and come up with clear local revenue collection projections.

Speaking to Aloysius Kitengo the programme officer SEATINI Uganda, they aim to decentralize the local government in terms of revenue collection. “The district is not effectively collecting the expected revenue from the local service tax, it also takes us to the administrative part of it, how the administrators are understanding the aspect of those particular sources of revenue and how they are supposed to be collected, for us what we want to see is tremendous independence of local government from the central government in terms of revenue because as per the decentralization policy, the central government is supposed to support the local government  to be collecting more revenue, so for us we would love to see decentralization policy becoming effective.”

 
Aloysius kittengo, the program manager SEATINI Uganda in a training season

The revenue officer in Nebbi District Godwin Ugernrwoth says there is need to review the local revenue enhancement plan because of the new developments
“So we have been having these local enhancement plan but they were not as comprehensive as they should be, but we still believe they are some gaps in the them, there new things that have come up after the approval of that plan for example, the Integrated Revenue Management Systems (IRAS) that we need to operate, there are new administrative units that have come up, also some omissions that we realized we couldn’t capture in that document.”


Godwin Ugernwroth the revenue officer Nebbi District

Additionally, Boniface Opiyo the Nebbi District planner says the review will help address the issues of planning. ”We have been collecting local revenue below our projections, which has affected many of our development activities and also the planning process, so this is going to help us address the challenges of planning and having a clear strategy.” 

The local revenue enhancement plan is used as a guide for local revenue collection and mobilization.

COVER PHOTO: SEATINI members pose for a group photo with Nebbi district local government officials By Anslem Ojaru