Members of Parliament have repealed the Uganda Export Promotions Act, Cap 102 and passed the Free Zones (Amendment) Bill, 2024 to merge the Export Promotions Board and Uganda Free Zones Authority into one entity called ‘the Uganda Free Zones and Export Promotions Authority.’
As such, Parliament has merged the Uganda Export Promotions Board with the Uganda Free Zones Authority into one entity called ‘the Uganda Free Zones and Export Promotions Authority’ under the supervision of the Ministry responsible for trade.
According to MPs, the move will see the government save Shs6.516Bn, while 7 staff are likely to lose their job in this merger.
“The Committee also observes that the net savings accruing out of the merger of the Uganda Export Promotions Board and the Uganda Free Zones Authority would be UGX 6.227Bn in the first year of the merger i.e. FY 2024125, and this would increase to UGX 6.516Bn in the subsequent Financial Year 2025/26,” said Mwine Mpaka, Chairperson, Trade Committee.
The Committee on Trade observed that 16 staff of the Uganda Free Zones Authority would be laid off, and this would attract Shs900m as one-off payments as terminal benefits in FY 2024/25.
The Leader of Opposition, Hon. Joel Ssenyonyi, cautioned the government to deal with human resource gaps to effect the mergers.
“Merging entities will not deal with the inefficiencies for as long as we don’t deal with human resource… Otherwise, we shall be merging problems.”
Bills passed
Meanwhile, the House has also passed the Uganda National Commission for UNESCO (Amendment) Bill, 2024 to remove the corporate status of the Uganda National Commission for UNESCO and make the Ministry of Education the secretariat for the Commission. This will also dissolve the Commission’s Board,
Parliament also passed the Higher Education Students’ Financing (Amendment) Bill, 2024 that will transfer the functions of the Higher Education Students Financing Board to the Ministry of Education and Sports operated under the district quota system.
The House further passed the Warehouse Receipt System (Amendment) Bill, 2024 to mainstream the functions of the Uganda Warehouse Receipt System Authority into the Ministry of Trade.
The Chairperson of the Committee on Trade, Hon. Mwine Mpaka, presented a report of the committee on the Warehouse Receipt System (Amendment) Bill, 2024. The Bill intends to mainstream functions of the Uganda Warehouse Receipt System Authority into the Ministry of Trade.
Among the concerns of the trade committee on Uganda Warehouse Receipt System Authority include; deliberately overstepping its mandate by acting as an implementer and a regulator at the same time and poor absorption of funds allocated.
According to Hon. Mpaka, there would be no costs accruing to the Government as a result of mainstreaming the Uganda Warehouse Receipt System Authority into the Ministry of Trade.
The committee noted that the government would save up to Shs12.4bn by mainstreaming the Uganda Warehouse Receipt System Authority into the Ministry of Trade.
