Mbarara revenue boss bemoans non-taxable youthful population

Mbarara City revenue chief Samuel Tayebwa Rwakinanga says the 50 percent youthful population indicates increased dependency instead of taxable revenue from a working population.

MBARARA | Preliminary results of the 2024 National Population and Housing Survey place Mbarara City in the fifth position of the 10 newly created cities.

The provisional results, released on Thursday by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, show that Mbrarara has a population of 261,656 people, up from 195,160 in 2014.

the increase of about 74percent in population boom of Mbarara in the last ten years has created mixed reactions among the city leadership, noting the opportunities and challenges they face going forward.

According to the head of revenue at Mbarara City Council, Mr Samuel Tayebwa Rwakinanga, the 50 percent youthful population indicates increased dependency instead of taxable revenue from a working population.

“The population increase in the city doesn’t excite me to some extent because the figures indicate that half of our national population is below 17 years," Mr Tayebwa said.

"This is a huge dependent population than the working population and [it means] taxing the little the working population gets will create tax fatigue."

He is, however, excited about the increase in the visiting population to the city of 63318 people, which he says is an opportunity for the leadership to plan better and generate revenue from.

“I am excited about the visitors that come to Mbarara city to do business, use our facilities like hotels, happening places and this should be able to reflect in the coming revenue from the growing hotels," he added.

"Looking at the street parking fees, how much we are able to generate from street parking fees from the visitors but also planning better for the facilities cropping up."

Robert Mugabe Kakyebezi, the Mbarara city mayor, said there was a need to develop a better physical plan for the city for the growing population and visitors.

The mayor said they will also need to plan for the huge young population since they are adults and independent tomorrow.

“We should now shift our energies to developing a better physical plan, the challenge is that the youngest population is now bigger, we should then turn our planning method to stabling avenues that generate employment for the young population,” Kakyebezi said.

“The visitors who come to do business, shopping, benchmark and visit our hotels is an opportunity for us and that means as leaders, we need to create a better environment for them.”

Kakyebezi also noted that the growing population is an opportunity for them as politicians to mobilise better and get the votes to have them reinstated in their current political positions.

Speaking to the Nile Post, the Mbarara City Speaker Bonny Tashobya noted that they will have to revise the past budget to have a supplementary but also bring on board and empower private partners to better give services to the people of Mbarara City.

“Leaders must come out and present visionary ideas, if need be resort to 10-year development plan instead of the current five-year plan, the aspect of physical planning and revising the past budget to have a supplementary should also be looked into,” Tashobya said.

He said with many young people in the city and towns, the burden on food security is further increased since there are fewer farmhands as the other younger folks are in school.

"Few people are now engaged in direct food production so everything will be for buying,” Tashobya said.

While the tax authorities may not be particularly pleased by the statistic indicating that half of the population is below the age of 17, the city authorities remain hopeful that this demographic will soon contribute to the tax base as they enter adulthood, despite challenges such as unemployment and crime.