URSB to focus on community awareness and digitization of services
For the 2024–2025 financial year, community mobilization, mindset transformation, and service digitization have been identified by the Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) as top priorities.
Registrar General Mercy K. Kainobwisho made this revelation to stakeholders on Thursday during her presentation of the URSB’s performance.
In order to support entrepreneurship, innovation, and business growth, she stated that URSB would concentrate on key growth areas. These areas would be targeted through the doubling of public awareness campaigns, the development of cooperative capacity-building programs to improve the abilities, knowledge, and skills of stakeholders in navigating registration processes, managing intellectual property rights, and complying with regulatory requirements, and the advocacy of policy reforms, regulatory improvements, and legal reforms.
The Registrar General emphasized the effective deployment of the online business registration system (OBRS) as one of the accomplishments to date. According to her, this system has greatly improved accessibility, efficiency, and convenience for companies in need of registration services.
By utilizing its cutting-edge features, OBRS has made it easier for businesses to register and allowed them to do so from anywhere, which has made the business environment more competitive and agile.
Other noteworthy accomplishments mentioned by the Registrar General were the increase in non-tax revenue (NTR), which reached shs71.1 billion in the financial year 2022/2023; the execution of the mass business registration initiative, which facilitated the registration of 19,063 business names and 20,160 new companies between July and March of the 2023–2024 financial year; the protection of families through marriage registration; the facilitation of the passing of regulations under the companies and insolvency acts; and the improvement of MSMEs’ access to credit through the integration of the Security Interest in Movable Property Registry (SIMPO) system with the motor vehicle registry at Uganda Revenue Authority.
She also mentioned enabling automated and seamless lodging of caveats on motor vehicles used as collateral, as well as defending Uganda’s progress in addressing the outstanding issues regarding compliance with the Financial Action Point Task Force (FATF) standards which saw Uganda subsequently removed from the grey list.
In order to support business competitiveness, the Registrar General stated that the URSB, in its capacity as the country’s intellectual property office, has increased the registration of trademarks, innovations, and creative works. It has also made progress in amending the Copyright and Neighboring Rights Act 2006, gathering input from a variety of stakeholders, including writers, musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists.
She continued by saying that URSB was strengthening client service feedback mechanisms, carrying out corporate social responsibility initiatives, and encouraging stakeholder awareness and participation in URSB services as part of the government-initiated campaign to improve community mobilization and mindset change.
