President Museveni has ruled out any possibilities of slashing taxes as a measure to curb escalating prices of essential commodities in Uganda.
While addressing the nation last evening, President Museveni said removing taxes or subsidizing taxes would be a blunder especially on imported items it is suicidal.
Museveni said Uganda is currently stuck on making a choice between an absolute “collapse of the economy or survival” explaining that if the government subsidies or even just removes taxes on imported commodities like fuel and the purchasing level remains the same, the treasury will be bleeding.
Museveni emphasized that removing taxes on locally produced items such as cement, sugar and coffee would not only deplete the national reserves but also inflict tax revenue loss of more than Shs500billion.
President Museveni accused merchants of tax subsidies of being “cheap politicians with a populist agenda”- just over three days after security forces in Kampala blocked a peaceful protest by opposition figure Dr Kizza Besigye over surging commodity prices.
Dr Besigye claimed Uganda’s beleaguered economy was due to State extravagance amidst lacking output by the government in responding to the crisis but for Museveni, the problem of high commodity prices is easier to solve than Covid-19 was and it’s not new in Uganda.
Meanwhile, President Museveni has said he will publicly speak on matters surrounding the controversial coffee agreement on June 7th.
Museveni, in his last night’s televised address on the current commodity prices, on what he called disoriented discussion on the said coffee agreement by a section of legislators last week.
The President then promised to speak on the matter in detail at the given date, reasoning that he did not want to “touch, touch, here and there.
His revelation comes after Parliament last week voted to terminate the coffee deal that was previously signed between the government and Uganda Vinci Coffee Limited, a company that has been linked to an Italian investor, Ms Enrica Pinetti.
The government, in the deal, had among several things waived all taxes as well as offered free land, water, electricity and monopoly to buy premium coffee, an agreement that had kicked up a storm in the country.
Following this discovery, the angry lawmakers had resolved that all waivers were illegally granted by Matia Kasaija, the Finance Minister.
