Page 13 - EPSI Magazine Issue 8 final 2018.indd
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UGX per annuum in tax payment. Our Value Add-
ed Tax (VAT) bill per month this year is about 7 to 8
billion. And we pay about 1.3 billion in Pay as You
Earn (PAYE) to Uganda Revenue Authority.
But also if you look at the whole value chain,
the turnover is in excess of 1.8 trillion UGX; see-
ing the value, VAT, generated from that, if you look
at the whole sector outside UMEME, you can see
that UMEME is a conduit of more than 200 billion
UGX of tax to the government of Uganda. We col-
lect from the customers and in two or three steps
it has reached the government. Either UMEME will
pay Transmission, transmission will pay the Inte-
The other success is around revenue collec- grated Personnel and Payroll System (IPPS) and
tion. We were collecting around 80% of the billed straightaway it will be in the coffers of the govern-
revenues back in 2006. Now our 5-year average ment.
collection rate is 99%. It means people are pay-
ing – and not because of coercion, but they are EPSI: What about the challenges? Are
paying because they can see the value for money.
I always tell my staff the moment you deliver ser- there any that you faced or are still fac-
vice, the reliability, the convenience and all relat- ing?
ed services, people will pay their bills. Some peo-
ple do not pay because they do not want to pay There are a number of challenges. The first
but because of the inconveniences experienced. one is the whole perception element; the history.
I cannot blame the company, because the compa-
Another area of importance is the safety re- ny came in when the sector was in a crisis of load
cord which as a country we were not taking se- shedding, a crisis of government trying to move
riously. Through our shareholders Environmental, away from subsidies and a crisis of low invest-
Social and Governance (ESG) matters was an is- ment. This was again combining with the period
sue – every month in our management meetings, of Uganda developing; they were testing telecom
every quarter in our board meetings there is a services, banking services, use of computers and
session that talks about safety, social safeguards the actual need for electricity was growing. I mean
and the environment. So, our safety record has I have a phone and I need to charge it now. Previ-
greatly improved over the period through train- ously, it was no big deal and there was that dis-
ing our staff and contractors and sub-contractors, content. But we have improved and I believe that
through public awareness and attending to the customers are on our side now.
network to ensure all the dilapidated portions are
dealt with through proactive maintenance. The second challenge is vandalism of the net-
work. When people take our cables, they are look-
Another success, which I heavily participated ing for copper or transformer oil, really not only
in as the CFO, was to bring about the Initial Public does it increase the costs to replace those assets,
Offering (IPO) – we enabled many Ugandans to but also missed opportunities and the economic
partake in the Capital Markets here through list- impact on our customers is very high in that some
ing on the Uganda Securities Exchange. There is a industries cannot produce.
lot of goodwill we are getting from this.
The other time some people were stealing
From the government perspective, not only steel wire on our poles that feed Roofings Limit-
have we managed to wean ourselves off the ed plant and clients were getting disturbances on
subsidies, but we a re a major taxpayer. We are their line. You know for them any disturbance on
among the top ten taxpayers in the country. We their line leads to a loss of close to 100,000USD
contribute in excess of 75,000,000,000 (75Bn) in damaged materials in production. That is why
