Boldly, PAYE (Pay As You Earn) is 30% levy pried off from employees/workers monthly salaries.  While presenting budget proposals to Parliamentary Committee on Trade Tourism and Industry on the 22nd April 2010, the Uganda National Chamber of Commerce and Industry proposed that PAYE be scrapped-with immediacy. This is why?

Uganda is a strategic central trade hub for the East African Community (EAC). For example, the country has managed to present itself as a link necessary to leverage trading benefits in the resurgent lucrative markets in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and the Southern Sudan. The Customs Union protocol came into force in 2005 and by 2007 the total intra –EAC trade had increased by 22% from USD 1342.6 million to USD 1,973.2 million. The Common Market protocol will be operational from 1st July 2010 with yet more fortunes for trade. The foregoing protocols mean that trading gets freer with myriad barriers mitigated. Specifically the Common Market means that a single economic space with in which business and labour moves and operate so as to stimulate greater productive efficiency, increased employment and intra and extra regional trade is created. It also means that Uganda will have to compete with the rest of East Africa in labour markets, commodity markets, finance markets, and above all- the market opportunity presented by 140 million people in the 5 EAC countries. What is obvious is that a well organized and technologically astute country will realize gains and possibly swallow economies of others. Is Uganda ready to take advantage of opportunities presented by the Integration? Is Uganda’s business environment competitive?