Uganda Business Name Registration by an Individual (URSB Statement of Particulars)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields and flow and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-22

The document was derived directly from the official URSB PDF's own text content, but the full field-by-field comparison the practice requires (manual-source-review-v1 → Procedure step 2) has not yet been completed against a live URSB filing counter or e-service (this is a paper/in-person filing form with no online-filing screens to compare against). It therefore remains draft, not verified.

Why this schema and why now (GOV-4343)

GOV-4343 is the recurring "GovSchema Standard Research" cycle. The GOV-4307 cycle (2026-07-22) screened Uganda across all six verticals and banked three STRONG, unauthenticated, unblocked candidates: DMV (authored the same day as ug/mowt/driving-licence-application@1.0.0, opening Uganda as the registry's 81st jurisdiction — GOV-4335/GOV-4337), Business Formation (this document), and National ID (NIRA Form 3, First-Time Registration). This cycle re-checked both remaining candidates before choosing: NIRA's host (nira.go.ug) again failed to connect (connection timeout, the same failure the GOV-4335 cycle also recorded when it re-checked NIRA), while URSB's host returned the document cleanly. Business Formation was authored this cycle; National ID remains open, banked backlog for a future cycle to retry once nira.go.ug is reachable.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): ug/ursb/business-name-registration-individual / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB).
• Primary source URL: https://ursb.go.ug/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/business-name-registration-individual-1639049617.pdf — fetched directly this cycle: HTTP 200, application/pdf, 272,844 bytes, sha256 9599391278190fa1438e5bc0ee2f74ca34febe63e2b3613fb94cb94752c65571. This matches the GOV-4307 cycle's own scouting report ("HTTP 200, 273KB") within rounding.
• Retrieval / extraction method: the PDF's raw bytes were retrieved directly (not a third-party summary) and text was extracted with pdfjs-dist, walking each page's text-run items and grouping by y-position to reconstruct the form's own printed line order. All 3 pages extracted cleanly with no glyph-mapping failures.
• Official form title: "Statement of Particulars required to be given pursuant to the Business Names Registration Act IN CASE OF AN INDIVIDUAL" (no form number is printed on the document itself).
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-22.
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer), initial authoring source-review.

Companion form fetched for comparison (not modelled by this document)

To resolve the ambiguity described in "Scope narrowing and why" below, this cycle also fetched URSB's sibling form: https://ursb.go.ug/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/business-name-registration-firm-or-corporation-1639049602.pdf (HTTP 200, application/pdf, 276,528 bytes), and independently confirmed via a raw fetch of https://ursb.go.ug/business-registration-forms/'s own HTML (not a WebFetch summary alone — the exact anchor text was grepped directly out of the retrieved HTML) that URSB's own forms-listing page labels the two forms distinctly: row "a" links this document's own source PDF as "Business Name Registration (Individual)"; row "b" links the sibling PDF as "Business Name Registration (Firm or Corporation)".

What was confirmed against the source

Every field below was independently re-derived from the raw extracted text (see "Retrieval / extraction method"), matched to the form's own numbered items 1–9 plus its unnumbered "Dated"/"Signed" execution block and its separate "STATUTORY DECLARATION" page:

| Source item | Field(s) | |---|---| | 1 – Business name to be registered (+ own note on multiple business names) | businessName, otherBusinessNames | | 2 – General nature of the business | natureOfBusinessDescription | | 3 – Principal place of business (Plot, Street and Postal Address) | principalPlaceOfBusinessAddress | | 4 – Present Christian name(s), surname and age (+ own conditional clause on non-European origin/father's name) | applicantChristianNames, applicantSurname, applicantAge, applicantOfNonEuropeanOrigin (unprinted gate), applicantFatherName | | 5 – Former Christian name(s) and surname (if any) | applicantFormerName | | 6 – Nationality (+ own conditional clause on nationality of origin) | applicantNationality, applicantNationalityOfOrigin | | 7 – Usual place of residence (Plot, Street and Postal Address) | applicantResidentialAddress | | 8 – Other business occupation (if any) | applicantOtherOccupation | | 9 – Date of commencement of business | dateOfCommencement | | "Dated this ___ day of ___ 20..." / "Signed: ___" | applicationDate, signature | | Form's own introductory notice on who must sign, and section 6's statutory-declaration requirement | signedByApplicantInPerson (unprinted gate) | | STATUTORY DECLARATION — "I, ___", "of ___ Uganda", "DECLARED at ___ in this ___ District of ___", "this ___ day of ___ 20..." | declarantName, declarantAddressInUganda, declarationPlace, declarationDistrict, statutoryDeclarationDate |

Registration fee ("Registration Fee. Shs. 24,000", printed at the top of page 1) is payment metadata, not applicant-collected data, and is excluded — consistent with this registry's general boundary (cf. ie/cro/business-name-registration-individual).

Scope narrowing and why

• This form's own boilerplate legal notice — inherited verbatim from the Business Names Registration Act and printed identically on both the Individual and Firm/Corporation variants — refers throughout to "the individuals who are partners" (plural). Taken in isolation, this could suggest the form supports an unbounded number of individual co-owners, not a single sole proprietor. This document instead scopes to exactly one individual applicant, for three independent reasons: (1) URSB's own forms-listing page explicitly labels this specific PDF "Business Name Registration (Individual)" — singular — as distinct from its sibling "Firm or Corporation" form (see "Companion form fetched for comparison" above); (2) GovSchema v0.3 has no array/repeating-group field construct (GSP-0009 tracks a future proposal for one), so an unbounded partner list could not be modelled faithfully regardless; (3) the source form itself prints only one ruled writing area per numbered item (4–8), with no additional pre-printed partner slots, unlike a form genuinely designed for a variable-length list. A future reviewer who confirms this form is in practice also used to register a small ordinary partnership of individuals (not just a sole proprietor) should treat that as a new schema version (VERSIONING §3) modelling a small, disclosed, bounded number of partner slots, not a silent edit of this one.
• applicantOfNonEuropeanOrigin and signedByApplicantInPerson are both unprinted boolean gates, not checkboxes on the source form. Field 4's own text conditions the father's-name requirement on the applicant being "of non-European origin" (a colonial-era Business Names Registration Act clause, retained here in the source's own language per this registry's practice of quoting a government form's own wording rather than paraphrasing it away, even where that wording reflects dated statutory drafting), and the form's introductory notice conditions the Statutory Declaration on who signs the form (all partners in person vs. one individual/director signing on the others' behalf), per section 6 of the Act. Neither condition has a printed checkbox to key a requiredWhen gate on, so both are modelled as unprinted boolean fields the applicant themselves answers directly — the same treatment this registry has given comparable unprinted-condition gaps elsewhere (e.g. zm/dnrpc/passport-application's isMarriedWoman/hasLostPreviousPassport gates).
• The Magistrate/Commissioner for Oaths' own signature block on the Statutory Declaration page is excluded. That officiant's signature certifies the declaration was sworn before them; it is a third party's own certification, not applicant-supplied data — the same treatment this registry gives other officiant/examiner blocks (e.g. the doctor's Medical Examination Report excluded from ug/mowt/driving-licence-application, authored the same day).
• Address fields (principalPlaceOfBusinessAddress, applicantResidentialAddress) are modelled as single free-text strings, matching the source form's own single ruled writing box per item, with no internal line1/line2/town sub-labels printed.
• No asterisk or similar mandatory-field marker appears anywhere in the extracted text. Required/optional judgments are derived from each item's own wording (e.g. "(if any)" or "(if applicable)" phrasing marks a field optional; a plain, unqualified item is marked required) rather than from any printed marking convention, the same basis ie/cro/business-name-registration-individual's own VERIFICATION.md records for its own, unmarked RBN1 specimen.

What is NOT yet independently verified

• Whether URSB's in-person filing counter enforces any of this document's requiredWhen gates (applicantFatherName, the five Statutory Declaration fields) as strictly as modelled here, since this is a paper/in-person form with no online filing screen to cross-check field-level enforcement against.
• Whether this "Individual" form is, in current URSB practice, ever also accepted for a small ordinary partnership of individuals (see "Scope narrowing and why" above) — this review found no live URSB guidance page confirming or ruling that out, only the forms-listing page's own "Individual" vs. "Firm or Corporation" labelling.
• The current UGX 24,000 registration fee's own currency/amount is recorded here as excluded payment metadata (see above) but was not independently cross-corroborated against a second, live URSB fee schedule this cycle.

Mock test run (phase 4)

Three realistic payloads and multiple deliberately invalid payloads were checked field-by-field against every field's type/required/validation/ requiredWhen rule and steps[].fields referential completeness, using an independently hand-written mock validator (not the registry's shared tools/validate.mjs, to cross-check it independently) plus this registry's own committed conformance fixtures (see conformance/ug/ursb/ business-name-registration-individual/1.0.0/):

1. Sole trader of European origin, signing in person, no former name, no other business names, no other occupation — the minimal valid case; all optional fields and both conditional blocks (applicantFatherName, the five Statutory Declaration fields) omitted. Result: valid.
2. Applicant of non-European origin (per field 4's own gate) with a former name and a stated nationality of origin different from present nationality — exercises applicantOfNonEuropeanOrigin: true + applicantFatherName together, plus applicantFormerName and applicantNationalityOfOrigin, still signed in person (Statutory Declaration fields correctly omitted). Result: valid.
3. Application signed by an authorized representative rather than the applicant in person — signedByApplicantInPerson: false, exercising all five Statutory Declaration fields together. Result: valid.
4. Deliberately invalid payloads (one induced error each) — missing businessName, missing natureOfBusinessDescription, missing principalPlaceOfBusinessAddress, missing applicantSurname, missing applicantNationality, missing applicantResidentialAddress, missing dateOfCommencement, missing signature, applicantOfNonEuropeanOrigin: true with applicantFatherName omitted (fails the conditional requirement), signedByApplicantInPerson: false with declarantName omitted (fails the conditional requirement), and an unknown field injected. Result: all correctly rejected.

All payloads were also checked against schema.json's steps array: every field is reachable from steps[0] through next chaining, and no field is orphaned from a step.

Path to a verified claim (next step)

To advance to status: verified, a reviewer applies manual-source-review-v1 (Procedure step 2) against a URSB in-person filing counter or a future URSB e-service (none exists today for this form), resolves the two open items above (partnership-of-individuals usage; live fee cross-corroboration), resolves any discrepancy by shipping a new schema version (immutability — VERSIONING §3), and records the outcome here plus sets status: verified with a current verification.lastVerifiedAt/nextReviewBy.

Re-verification

Per the practice's Cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-22 (6 months). Re-check the source on or before that date and on any source.url change.