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Under the Mining and Minerals Act 2022 (the enabling Act), the Minister responsible for Mineral Development is empowered to regulate gold export by statutory instrument. SI No. 30 of 2024 operationalises that power through three interlocking requirements:
1. Purity floor. All gold exports must meet a 99.9% purity standard (international refinery grade). Unrefined or below-purity material cannot lawfully be exported; it must be processed domestically to the required standard first.
2. Export levy. A US$200 per kilogram levy is imposed on refined gold exports, payable to the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) prior to shipment. Exporters must produce URA levy-payment evidence to customs.
3. Per-consignment permit. Importers (and by extension exporters) must obtain a permit for each consignment, tying the levy and purity documentation to a specific shipment record.
The instrument replaces a predecessor of the same name (first issued March 2023, expired June 2023). That gap in coverage — roughly 11 months — coincides with an IGG investigation that found Shs 40bn in uncollected export levies, indicating enforcement broke down when the original SI lapsed. The 2024 re-enactment is partly a direct response to that compliance failure.
export-restriction on raw gold: it forces domestic refining to 99.9% before any gold can leave Uganda. This mirrors Indonesia's hilirisasi approach (processing-first before export), adapted for precious metals rather than industrial minerals.
base (largely artisanal and semi-industrial), would yield US$12-16m/yr in formal levy revenue if fully collected — a material fiscal line versus past enforcement gaps.
mineral flows (particularly from eastern DRC). The per-consignment permit + purity certificate framework creates traceability leverage, though enforcement depends on URA and customs capacity.
benefit: the purity mandate converts artisanal raw gold into a captive input stream that must be domestically processed before export.
Amendment Bills analysis notes ongoing review of mineral export levies).
structure could dovetail with ICGLR chain-of-custody requirements if linked to the mineral trading licence system under the Mining and Minerals (Licensing) Regulations 2023.
Uganda's gold output volume) or whether the current SI applies uniformly regardless of production scale.