Mbikoyezu Moses, Chief Executive Officer of Timbaba Group. Photo Credit: Curtsy

A Uganda-based South Sudanese entrepreneur is appealing to revenue collection institutions to exempt vendors from paying taxes to encourage youth into business.

Mbikoyezu Moses is the Chief Executive Officer of Timbaba Group, a retail company providing e-commerce services in Kampala, Uganda.

He said although taxes are important in providing social services to the citizens, the authorities should not impose heavy duties on low-income earners.

Mr Moses said South Sudanese authorities should emulate their Uganda counterparts who do not over tax their citizens.

“Taxes are meant for service provision, not for anyone else but for us. But there are people who are supposed to be exempted of taxes. If we talk for instance the market vendors, these are low-income earners those ones can be exempted from taxes,” Moses said.

He made the call while speaking to Eye Radio on the role of young people in economic growth and electoral preparedness in Juba on Tuesday.

“When we talk of medium-income and high-income earners, those ones can be taxed of course. Taxes are very important because, without taxes, we cannot have good roads, and we cannot have all these social amenities like hospitals.”

“So, it is very important for us to pay taxes but of course, at the end of the day, it doesn’t need to be so heavy, taxes on that side of Uganda are of course there but it is not that so serious.”

He further encouraged South Sudanese youth to learn from young people in the region and be proactive businessmen that can control their own market.

“Young people have to work; a lot of money is being drained out of this country to foreign countries that are very bad indicators. We need to work, where we cannot, we need to learn it is the entire process and you cannot become perfect in one day, it is a process.”

“We have works like I see along the streets, I have seen foreigners doing chapati work, all these years since 2005 at least 90% of Junubin (South Sudanese) young men would be doing that by now so things that we do not know, we need to get involved and know them.”

“There is nothing that is impossible, so the young people need to step up their game instead of sitting in the corridors washing all these years, your youthful age doing nothing, we have to step up our game.”