The Uganda Revenue Authority Headquarters twenty two (22) floor building is set to be completed by end of August this year, the tax body officials have revealed.
The state-of-the-art building is divided into four podiums and eighteen tower floors totaling to 26,021 square metres.
The project also provide for a car parking structure for 360 cars plus surface parking for 710 vehicles.
“The total area of the parking structure is 12,923 square metres with five (5) levels for parking and the sixth level designed to house a crèche for breastfeeding staff,” Vincent Seruma, Assistant Commissioner-Public & Corporate Affairs at URA told Business Focus.
He added that the building is designed to be Green with an Intelligent Building Management System (BMS) and other ICT Innovations, making it a high performance building.
“At peak in 10 years’ time, the building will accommodate up to 1,700 staff,” Seruma said.
He noted that the total project cost is Shs139bn in a construction period of 36 months and post construction defect liability period of 12 months. And the project is fully funded by the Government of Uganda.
“Structural works for the main tower, parking building and conference hall is 99% completed. Final finishes works are in process,” he noted, adding that the overall objective of the Project is to provide infrastructure for better service delivery and the strategy is to have all URA back office operation in Kampala, Mukono and Entebbe converge at Nakawa in the proposed HQs building.
The benefits of the building
Ian Rumanyika, the Manager Public & Corporate Affairs at URA noted that the building comes with a number of benefits, but most importantly it will save tax payers over US$3 million (over UShs11bn) annually the tax body is spending in rent currently.
“This is expected to reduce the cost of doing business for taxpayers through provision of one-stop-service-centre and savings on rent, transport, ICT connectivity, security, courier services, for URA.
It is envisaged that only tax information centres will remain operational in central Kampala and its environs after the closure of the main tax offices in Kampala East, North, Central, Entebbe and Mukono,” Rumanyika said, adding that it will also facilitate a full integration of the back office service to support the self service business model of e-transactions.
“Also, we intend to save a lot of money into rented buildings in terms of IT installations, renovations at time of vacating, minor maintenance, etc. Sometimes rent is increased and we fail to vacate due to the high costs of shifting, business interruption and investments already put into the rented building in terms of IT installations,” he said.
He added that URA will offer faster and better services to clients resulting from process integration while reducing administrative costs to the taxpayer and URA.
He says the building will also improve URA’s image and corporate branding in the Public domain.
“URA has been the only revenue administration body in the EAC Region without a befitting headquarters building,” he said.
