Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has collected a total of Sh2.1 trillion in the last month of February 2024.

According to the performance of the economy report for February 2024, which the finance ministry has released, the collection of Sh2102.53b realised in February was however below the target of Sh2250.65b and this has resulted in a shortfall of Sh148.12b.

Taxes on international trade were mainly affected by the underperformance of Value Added Tax (VAT) on imports which was short of target by Sh44.56b as the projected import volumes did not materialize for the period.

Indirect domestic taxes performed below the Sh622.82b target by 10.0% resulting from shortfalls in both local excise duty and VAT.

Government expenditures for last month, according to the report, were Sh2,785.66b, which was higher than the planned expenditure of Sh2,721.88b.

The higher-than-programmed expenditure was mainly due to an increase in recurrent expenditure which was above the plan by 13.5%.

Development expenditure, on the other hand, was lower than what had been planned for the month by 15.3% mainly on account of spending on externally financed projects which performed at only 63.6%. This is partly due to absorption constraints faced by implementing entities resulting in slower disbursement of the funds from development partners towards these projects.

Government set a target of collecting a total of Sh29.6trillion in revenue to raise some of the resources required to fund the 2023/2024 national budget of Sh52.7 trillion.