MPs on the parliamentary Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) have resolved to visit the industrial parks across the country and verify whether companies and individuals given land by government are utilizing it as per their request, saying that some of them are instead speculators.
This is was reached at today during a meet with Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) officials who appeared before the Committee to respond to some audit queries by the Auditor General.
MPs faulted UIA for failure to collect Shs19.8bn as premium fees from investors occupying land in industrial park.
The Auditor General, John Muwanga in his report noted that UIA did not collect the fees in question as required by law in 2015/2016.
Lawrence Byensi, UIA Executive Director told the committee that the collection of the money in question was affected following a presidential directive issued by President Yoweri Museveni barring UIA from collecting the Shs80,000 premium fee per acre but he was not clear on how much the authority had collected as premium .
Following Byensi’s revelation Mubarak Munyagwa, COSASE Chairperson questioned why UIA stopped collecting the premium arrears when the presidential directive was not ordering for a write off of the arrears.
Paul Mwiru (Jinja East) stated that industrial park land especially in Namanve industrial park was given out to speculators with no capacity pay premium fee and developing it.
He said that the development of industrial parks has been slow because investors who took the land are not putting up industries as promised while getting it.
The committee members demanded UIA to provide a list of companies and individuals who were allocated land and the type of projects they were supposed to put up.
