Several government agencies will save billions of Shillings a year in rent, after shifting to the newly constructed business facilitation one-stop centre in Kololo.
The Uganda Registration Services Bureau, the agency responsible for the registration of businesses, intellectual property, civil registration and business insolvency, has already settled in the 12-storey building located on Plot 1, Baskerville Avenue. The building also has four basement floors.
The project was implemented with the aid of the World Bank’s 3 million US Dollars (11 billion Shillings) funding facility under the Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project (CEDP) coordinated by the Private Sector Foundation, as a government of Uganda project.
The idea was mooted in 2016 and construction was launched in 2018. It was initially expected to end in 18 months. But the works, by the China National Engineering Technology Corporation, stalled a bit, due to disruptions including the COVID-19 pandemic.
The building is now home to URSB, the Capital Markets Authority-CMA and the Uganda Investments Authority-UIA. The agencies will save more than 4 billion Shillings in rent per year.
“We are saving about 1.7 billion Shillings per year on rent. The facility answers the need to ease doing of business in Uganda and enable users of our services access service under one roof,” said Provia Nangobi, the Head of Corporate and Public Affairs at URSB.
On their part, CMA has reportedly been paying 28 million Shillings a month or 333 million Shillings a year on renting the one floor at the Jubilee Insurance Centre along Parliament Avenue in Kampala, on top of paying a monthly one million Shillings to Kampala Capital City Authority, for parking tickets.
CMA is the statutory body responsible for regulating and promoting the development of capital markets, approving the listing of shares, and licensing operators like brokers, fund managers, investment schemes and investment advisors.
“We will be shifting around Saturday, October 1, and will complete the relocation before October 4, when we will have left Jubilee Insurance Centre,” said Samuel Sanya, the Communications and Public Relations Manager at CMA. He says they have been occupying one floor at Jubilee, and they will also occupy one floor at UBFC.
On top of the three agencies, the facility will also have other agencies that support doing business in Uganda in the One Stop Centre on the first floor. The UIA will also soon relocate to their permanent home having briefly relocated to Namanve Business and Industrial Park in December 2021 as a way of cutting costs.
When shifting, the Executive Director, Robert Mukiza, said the high expenses were affecting the implementation of the project to establish 25 industrial parks countrywide. The UIA, established in 1997 was operating at Twed Towers along Lumumba Avenue before relocating. With one of the functions being availing land to prospective investors, UIA has thousands of acres of land around the country, which included Plot 1 Baskerville Avenue Kololo.
“Yes, No. 1 Baskerville is UIA land, which it offered to facilitate the quicker setup of the UBFC funded under CEDP by the World Bank. We are shifting to the UBFC soon, within a month,” said David Rupiny, Communication Officer at UIA.
He says the office at Namanve will be maintained for activities that need proximity to the industrial park, but that the move to Kololo will permanently save them the burden of rent.
“Before we shifted to Namanve, we were paying 2 billion Shillings in rent, annually, so we shall be saving that much. We shall use the UBFC, which sits on UIA-donated land as our headquarters, yet maintain the Namanve office to be closer to our investors,” Rupiny says.
URSB says the one-stop centre for business facilitation will greatly improve the doing business environment, cut down on the time taken to do documentation by investors, as well as reduce costs in the end.
Business registration and insolvency difficulties mainly due to red tape have consistently been named as the main hindrances to a positive business environment perspective by investors, leading to poor performance in the global rankings. Uganda ranks a low 116th behind neighbours Kenya (56th) and Rwanda 36th.
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