The Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury (PSST), Ramathan Ggoobi, has urged all revenue collection agencies to double efforts in revenue collection.

Ggoobi made the remarks on Thursday, February 29, 2024, during the opening ceremony of a three-day consultative workshop to review the resource envelope for FY 2024/2025 at Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala.

The resource envelope is the sum of available resources for financing the government budget in a given financial year.

The engagement has brought together all stakeholders in the revenue mobilisation efforts, including the Uganda Revenue Authority and agencies that collect non-tax revenue.

In his speech, Ggoobi stated that the purpose of this engagement is to share practical proposals beyond policy and identify actionable areas to increase revenue, and that the borrowing window closes annually.

“The window for borrowing for the budget is closing every single year. There is no more commercial borrowing for the budget. The economy has expanded, and we must move beyond words and collect more revenue,” Ggoobi noted.

Additionally, he stated that no country has developed by borrowing excessively, but rather by saving and collecting more revenue, noting that the government is working to grow the economy by 10-fold in the next 15 years.

He pledged his support for these institutions in collecting more revenue and working together to reduce tax evasion and avoidance.

“You have all my support to collect more revenue, and we must collectively curb tax evasion and tax avoidance,” Ggoobi added.

During the three days, the team will discuss the revenue strategy for the next fiscal year, tax expenditure rationalisation, improving tax administration efficiency, medium-term debt strategy, and its own source revenue strategy.

The resource envelope for Financial Year 2023/2024 was projected at Shs. 49.9 trillion, compared to Shs48.1 trillion for Financial Year 2022/2023, reflecting an increase of Shs1.8 trillion.