The Parliamentary Budget Committee has Thursday recommended the recovery of Shs47.7bn from five companies which benefited from a tax waiver that was recommended by the Ministry of Finance in the Supplementary Budget of 2015/16.
The committee vice chairperson who is also the MP for Elgon county Wamakuyu Mudimi told Parliament that seven companies were granted a tax waiver of corporation tax worth Shs77.2bn.
The committee recommended that out of Shs77.2bn, Shs47.7bn should be treated as lost public funds and should be recovered from the companies.
The five companies to refund the 47.7 billion shillings include Aya Group of Companies which received got a Shs3.7bn waiver, BIDCO Uganda (Shs5.8bn0, Quality Chemicals which was pardoned Shs 29.8bn, Steel and Industries (Shs1.5bn) and Southern range Nyanza (Shs6.7bn).
The committee noted that the circumstances and procedures followed in granting tax exemption to the five companies were illegal.
“The committee observed that the government in perpetrating tax expenditure policy to support investment in strategic areas, it executed certain documents to exempt some companies from certain tax obligations,” Wamakuyu said.
“The committee scrutinized the documents and noted that the majority did not meet the requirements of the law, particularly Article 119 (5) of the constitution.”
Article 119 (5) provides that no agreement, contract, treaty, convention or document by whatever name called to which government is a party or in respect of which the government has an interest, shall be concluded without legal advice from the Attorney General, except in such cases and subject to such conditions as Parliament may by law prescribed.
The committee only allowed Uganda Electricity Generation company limited (UEGCL) and Uganda Electricity Transmission company Limited (UETCL) enjoy the tax waiver.