By Leonard Kamugisha Akida,
NATIONAL
President Museveni has said that the exempting taxes and or giving subsidies for locally produced and imported commodities as way of controlling high prices of commodities in the country will cripple the economy and cause tax losses to the government.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: If we remove taxes or even give subsidies, the level of consumption will either remain the same or actually increase. Removal of taxes mean Tax loss to the gov't e.g. Ugx 1.5tn for petroleum, Ugx1.15tn for Diesel and Ugx520bn for wheat.#ParrotsugNews
— Parrots UG (@parrotsug) May 22, 2022
The president made remarks on Sunday evening during a televised nation address on escalating prices of commodities like fuel and other produces. During the address Museveni said that the Uganda would lose to much money on giving subsidies on imported commodities for instance Ugx1.5 trillions on petroleum, Ugx1.15 trillion on diesel and Ugx520bUgx520bn on wheat.
He further noted that Ugx193b would be lost on locally produced sugar, UGx200bn on cement and Ugx120b on steel bars among others.
The president called for use of local produces such as millet, cassava, sorghum, sunflower oil, matooke among others both as raw materials and food to avoid higher prices of commodities.
“Secondly, there is a need to use our raw materials like sunflower for soap as we wait for the extended palm oil production,” said Museveni.
He added, “for bread, we can use banana and cassava flour. Millet is the only cereal with protein, carbohydrates and iron.
Museveni: For many years now, I don’t eat bread. I eat cowpeas, bananas, millet, beef and g.nuts. I am nearly making 78 years in September and I have been well.” Museveni urged
Museveni is known to have publicly told Ugandans decrying high bread prices to eat cassava if bread is expensive.
“The only convenience we found in bread was in storage & transportation,” he retaliated
The president also said the price has gone high due to producers who have since turned into producing other items making it exoensive for raw materials thus high fuel prices. He added that external wars in Ukraine has largely increased fuel and commodity prices.
“I hear some lroducers palm oil have turned their palm oil into petroleum, this leads to limited raw materials for manufucturing of oil,” Museveni said
“The price of fuel was going up even before the war in Ukraine because of the new clean energies movement, yet these would take time to be available. The Russia-Ukraine war has made this worse,”
This problem of the high fuel prices is sucking money from the pockets of individuals and sucking more dollars from our national reserved.
He instead advised Ugandans to be frugal while using imported items noting that government cannot intervene in the exorbitant prices.
“The wise way is to use these imported commodities frugally or to look for alternatives if they are there”, he said
