The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee has directed the ministry of finance to list private companies which

Workers at Southern Range Textiles Limited making clothes.It one of the textile industries in Uganda.

benefited from the tax waiver for the supply of raw materials imported for manufacturing textiles but instead duped government when they supplied finished textile items.

This was after members of the Committee Chaired by the Soroti district Member of Parliament, Angelina Ossege, discovered that these companies whose names were not tabled before the supplied textile items already woven and printed polyester bed sheets materials.

MPs who included that  for Kalungu West, Kasambya County, Mbwatekamwa Gaffa, Masaka Municipality, Mathiaus Mpuuga, Angelina Osege among others noted that government paid 653 million shillings in form of value added tax and import duty on raw materials as interventions to make locally manufactured textiles cheaper and promote the growing of crops that provide fiber.

MPs quizzed the ministry of finance officials why they kept a blind eye on this illegality and   paid money to private companies contrary to agreed principles and imported finished items instead of raw materials that undermined the capacity of local producers of textiles products and the intension.

Keith Muhakanizi. The Secretary to the Treasury.

However the Secretary to Treasury, Keith Muhakanizi, says that the confusion was caused by a letter written to the ministry over the matter.

He also promised to give the committee the names of the companies which allegedly supplied the finished textile materials contrary to agreed textile raw materials.