Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) is seeking an increase in the agency’s ceiling of Non-Tax Revenue (NTR) from Shs106.7 billion to Shs140 billion in the 2023/2024 financial year.
According to UWA’s Executive Director, Sam Mwandha, the request is based on the projected NTR collections of over Shs150 billion.
He said they are not asking the Ministry of Finance to provide this money in the budget, they can just raise the ceiling.
He said that the increase will be used in the upgrade of protected areas, staff accommodation, Rhino translocation, electric fence maintenance, valley dam construction and boundary surveillance and maintenance, among others.
He made the remarks on Tuesday 18, during a breakfast meeting with the Media held in Kampala.
At the meeting, Mwandha also revealed that park visits and revenue collections shoot to record highs and more revenue is expected this year.
Uganda Wildlife Authority received 367,869 visitors between January and December 2022. Before Covid happened, he said 320,000 visitors was the highest number of visitors coming to the protected areas.
“For us to reach that number (367,869 visitors), this quarter we are in, we only need 56,000 visitors and I am confident we will get more than 60,000 and we will go above. Previously, the highest we have got was 330,000 and we are now saying, we are doing better than ever before,” Mwandha said.
On poaching, he said the vice of poaching will unfortunately not go easily.
Between July and December last year alone, 7307 poaching implements and seven guns with 14 live ammunition were recovered during operations by UWA personnel.
During the same period, 224.15 kilograms of ivory and 1870.5 kilograms of pangolin scales were also seized.
On the other side, there were 3974 cases of human-wildlife conflict reported.
Uganda has 10 national parks, 12 wildlife reserves, 13 sanctuaries and 05 community wildlife areas, all of which are under the Uganda Wildlife Authority.
