The taxman has in recent months been smiling all the way to bank after surpassing the monthly collection targets on the backdrop of a crackdown on middlemen in customs operations, the Commissioner General, Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), Johnson Musinguzi, has revealed.
Musinguzi said the middlemen commonly known as container leaders had assigned themselves the task of paying taxes on behalf of small traders for whom they transport goods and, in the process, were cheating traders and government and also causing delays in delivery of goods to traders.
He said this, among other grievances were responsible for the strike by Kampala City traders in August 2025.
“By April 2025, we discovered that government was losing a lot; container leaders had taken the role of URA to assess traders and collect tax and we also discovered that traders were exploited - so we stopped that practice and said once you bring here goods, let the traders pay for their own goods,” said Musinguzi.
While appearing before the Committee on Commissions, State Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) on Wednesday, 03 September 2025, he added, “Once we stopped that, we saw a significant increase in the collections at customs.”
URA has been able to increase the daily customs collections to about Shs 20 billion between May and June 2025.
MPs on COSASE learnt that several containers are stuck at the Mombasa Port, abandoned by container leaders who were found guilty of under declaration and miss declaring taxes on behalf of traders.
Musinguzi said the actual owners of the goods had been advised to approach URA to assess their goods with the sole purpose of only paying taxes. Penalties and other fees such as demurrage charged for the overstay of goods in Mombasa were discarded.
The committee chairperson, Hon. Medard Sseggona, expressed concern for the losses likely to be incurred by URA and traders in the attempts to rescue the abandoned containers.
“I am concerned about the containers stuck in Mombasa, either traders will lose or you will resort to auctioning. But even then, you will get less because you have to pay for demurrage,” said Sseggona.
MPs asked Musinguzi to also handle some of his staff who have been accused of mistreatment and impounding of trader’s goods.
Hon. Yusuf Nsibambi (FDC, Mawokota County South) cast doubt on URA’s ability to ensure that Ugandan traders will receive the actual goods they ordered for in the absence of the container leaders.
“You will risk giving goods to the wrong trader. You have no jurisdiction to handle individual consignments under the name of a container leader, so which evidence do you have if I show up as a trader and claim to have paid for goods in a certain container?” asked Nsibambi.