Here are some rapid fire figures that you may or may not have known.
Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) is celebrating its 30 years
of existence this year.
In the year URA opened its doors for business, the size of
the Uganda economy was $3.32billion according to the World Bank.
Last financial year URA revenue collections came in at sh19trillion
or about $5.3b.
So, URA last year collected one and a half times the economic output of Uganda in the year that it was launched. Assuming everything remains the same (Covid-19 emphasized how redundant such an assumption is), URA will collect at least, the equivalent of the country’s GDP in 1991 every year into the future...
That is an interesting statistic on several fronts but two
leap to mind.
One, is that despite these consistent gains in revenue
collection, we still need to collect more revenue as 13 percent of GDP, which
last year’s collections represent, cannot support our development goals.
And secondly, to think how small the economy was in 1991 relative
to today shows how far we have come. If all goes well, we will be saying the
same thing 30 years from now about the size of the Uganda economy today.
Unfortunately, as it often is with Uganda every achievement
comes up against an equal or more dramatic downside.
This week the new Inspector General of Government Betty
Kamya reported that corruption accounts for sh20trillion annually. I thought
there must have been a printing error because that would have been half of last
year’s budget or as pointed above all our tax revenues gobbled up by rapacious
public officials. It is inconceivable that government would have been able to
function to any level, if half the budget was stolen.
Kamya explained that sh131.2b was due to lost taxes, sh233b
in regulation related losses, sh451b losses in the education and health
sectors, sh459.2b to misuse of public facilities, sh590b in procurements these
are the ones we know and come up to about two trillion shillings. A heftier sum
than estimates of a few years ago of sh500b lost to corruption annually. Clearly
there has been some steady progress in this respect.
To this number the new IGG added losses due to absenteeism
of about sh2trillion and to round it off sh15trillion in losses due to environmental
degradation.
"While it was a relief to know that the rapacity of our public servants had not hyper inflated, there is still a lot of cause for worry....
In my book corruption is one of the biggest causes of
inequitable distribution of the benefits of the growth of the last three
decades.
The budget this year stands sh44trillion assuming a
population of 44 million that means the government plans to spend a million
shillings per Ugandan. So the two trillion lost in taxes, procurements and
misuse of public facilities is the allocation for two million Ugandans gone
into a handful of people’s pockets. And after denying the two million Ugandans
security, infrastructure and social services what do this handful of officials
do with their ill-gotten gains? They improve the security around their
mansions, fly their children to school out of the country and themselves for
annual health checks, that is before we talk about lavish holidays in the
Seychelles, Cape Town or the French Riviera.
It is already bad enough that government is spending a
miniscule million shillings annually on every citizen without some rapacious
officials keeping for themselves the entitlement of thousands of Ugandans at a
stroke of a pen.
But by widening the definition of corruption to absenteeism and
environmental degradation the IGG is saying that corruption goes beyond
stealing funds in the present to also the medium term effects of cutting work
and the long term effects of environmental degradation.
The rich man who fills up the neighbourhood wetland today to
build his apartment complex may not only be depriving the community of a water
source today but is also causing flooding and its attendant effects on the
community. The factory owner allowing untreated effluent into the lake is
raising the cost of tap water and therefore denying poorer communities of safe
drinking water. Cutting down trees to develop massive agricultural enterprises
may contribute to climate changes that kick the ladder from under the poor. And
on and on and on.
It is useful attempt to come to grips with the full extent of
what constitutes corruption and hopefully then makes the fight against the vice
more effective.
But it has been said before in this column that the fight against corruption will only begin to gather traction if we demonise to the point that the perpetrators are shirked like the man who defiles his infant daughter. There has to be social censure, we have to agree that this is a vice that affects us all even if the money is eaten in faraway Kampala...
As it is now our corrupt officials are given p[ride of place
at Sunday service at our weddings and other functions. The message to all is
that you have to take private advantage of your office wherever you are in
order to be taken seriously in our society. Therein lies the problem.
