A section of poultry farmers and feeds dealers have cried out for president Museveni’s immediate intervention in woos with the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) whom they accuse of illegally sneaking in new taxes on poultry feeds.
While they convened at the Uganda Small Scale Manufacturers Association (USSA) offices on Sunday, the poultry farmers and dealers said URA is doing more harm than good for their business survival.
They told reporters that URA has illegally introduced new taxes including the Value Added Taxes (VAT) of 18% and Import Duty of 10%, in addition to the already existing Withholding tax.
“Poultry farmers, feed and ingredient dealers as well as different stakeholders in the poultry value chain are under direct immediate threat from new tax developments being implemented by URA,” Peter Ssenkungu, the Secretary of the Uganda Poultry Association said.
Ssenkungu further justified that the said taxes are not approved by the ministry of finance adding that URA is working outside legal boundaries.
“We have over 500 containers stuck at border points awaiting clearance with funds accumulating, in terms of storage among other expenses. The Ministry of Finance has not introduced these taxes but to our surprise, URA has put it in, in a mediocre way we don’t understand,” he said.
According to the farmers, it now costs Shs16m to import a container of poultry feeds, from the Shs2m that have been used recently.
Andrew Rubeihayo, Executive Member Commercial Poultry Association said that even the communication of these new taxes two weeks ago was untimely.
“As we were planning to respond, they told us that they are assessing all these taxes in all the businesses for the recent years and this made people having tax obligation as high as Shs 40Bn, Shs25Bn with the lowest one being Shs600Bn,” he said.
He upon basis said that unless government intervenes, they are set to run out of business thus poultry products scarcity.
“These taxes will lead to hiking poultry products like eggs which will lead to a stoppage in eggs exportation since our neighbors who are importing them will be overwhelmed by the prices,” he said.
With the new tax, it’s understood that feeds as an input will increase in price by more than 28% (10% Import duty, 18% VAT). With the
the current economic situation in Uganda and in a subsector grappling with high maize costs and low farm produce prices, the collapse of the animal subsector is imminent.
