Posta Uganda and URSB sign MoU on postal addresses for companies
The Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) and Posta Uganda Ltd have signed a memorandum of understanding which will enable business entities that need postal addresses to get them at URSB offices. Having a postal mailbox is a legal requirement for any individual or group of people wishing to register a company in Uganda.
Bemanya Twebaze, Uganda’s registrar general, told local media: “We realised that the volume of people who need our services are increasing, and we found that previously people complained that the process of looking for postal addresses was hard.”
Twebaze added that the partnership would make the registration process cheaper and quicker.
Emmanuel Ocama, the head of business services at Posta Uganda, was quoted as saying that a post mailbox costs 76,000 Ugandan shillings (Shs) for small companies and Shs 120,000 VAT-inclusive for big companies in Kampala. A post box costs Shs 51,000 in the urban areas outside the capital, and Shs 31,000 in rural areas.
The current exchange rate is around 3,000 Ugandan shillings to the US dollar so these costs are not as exorbitant as they may at first appear, but they could still be a factor for some individuals and small local companies.
According to the Uganda Communications Commission, as of December 2013 there were “about 334 post offices and 79,417 private letter boxes all over the country”. This translated into an estimated letter box penetration of one box for every 94 households.
