The National Resistance Movement carried the day as Parliament controversially passed the Excise Duty Amendment Bill No.2, reducing Mobile money withdraw transactions to 0.5%, up from 1%.
Many analysts, Ugandans and financial players wanted the tax scrapped.
It is understood that many NRM MPs were set to vote against the controversial tax, but several changed their mind after an impromptu Caucus held at State House on Monday.
How it happened in Parliament
The Excise Duty Amendment Bill No.2 was the sixth item on the order paper.
At close to 3:20PM, Deputy Speaker, Jacob Oulanyah ordered the Clerk to Parliament, Jane Kibirige to ascertain the quorum ahead of the vote.
Government started implementing the 1% slapped on all mobile money transactions on July1, 2018, but it was met with stiff resistance from the public alongside social media tax, forcing government to consider reducing it.
Consequently, The Minister of Finance, Minister Matia Kasaija re-tabled the Bill titled “Excise Duty (Amendment) No.2 Bill, 2018” and it was sent to the Finance Committee for consideration.
After consideration of the Bill, the Committee failed to have a harmonized position on the tax that saw both a majority and minority report presented to Parliament.
On their first presentation last week, the minority report received overwhelming support from MPs, but it couldn’t be passed procedural grounds; the quorum wasn’t enough as MPs present failed to meet the 154 required number.
Parliament was adjourned to today October2, 2018 and in order not to repeat last week’s mistake, Oulanyah had to ascertain the right quorum.
After the head count, the quorum was 196 and voting kicked off.
After vote count, 101 MPs supported to have the proposal on 0.5% deleted, while 136 voted against the deletion, bringing the total number of votes cast to 237.
This caused some commotion in the House given that the head count had earlier ascertained that only 196 MPs were in the House at the time of the vote.
At 3:50PM, Oulanyah made the pronouncement noting, “We want the records to be clear. I personally witnessed some misconduct in the course of voting. So we are going to vote by roll call and tally. This is going to be roll call and tally, stand on microphone and announce your vote.”
With some of the Opposition Members being absent, the NRM side registered some shock results especially coming from Mariam Naigaga, Treasurer, NRM Caucus voted to have the tax dropped as well as the number of Rebel MPs having grown as those that voted against Presidential Age Limit still voted against the Mobile money tax.
Out of the 288 cast votes, 124 voted against the tax, while 164 voted to have the clause of 0.5% maintained. Government is expected to raise Shs57bn from the tax in question.
