Government Urged to enact Tourism Bill ahead of CHOGM
The Uganda Tourism Association (UTA) and the Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU) has asked the government to immediately enact the new Tourism Bill ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). The forthcoming CHOGM summit in 2007 requires such regulations, as clarification and grading of Ugandan facilities. The two associations have recommended that tourism be fully recognized as an export industry and that all tourism related services like hotels lodges should be VAT zero related for a minimum of seven years to stimulate sectoral growth and investment. This they said is in line with keeping the nature of these services as exports and will increase visitors’ arrivals in the country.
UTA and PSFU want the government to set a tourism development fund levy at 10% on accommodation bills and put measures in place for the benefiting body to collect the contributions directly. Such policy has been practiced in Kenya for over 25years and works well they said. The two agencies recommended that government should review the budget of such support agencies to increase human resources and funding levels. UTA also wants the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) to provide timely data on tourism arrivals per annum and a monthly or quarterly basis with variances shown vis-à-vis previous years. The two member organizations have also called for tax and duty payments for capital expenditure in the sector to be waived for the coming seven years thereafter-preferential rates for imported tourism related items. They further noted that the substantially higher cost of tourism related services makes Uganda’s tourism less competitive compared to their counterparts Kenya and Tanzania. such will make uganda therefore compete favourably with the rest of East Africa.
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