Local Animal feed manufacturers under their umbrella body, the Uganda Animal Feeds Manufacturers Association(UAFMA) have told parliament that the import duty of 10% and VAT of 18% by URA on concentrate feed will help protect local industries from unfair competition from imports.
Presenting their case before the Parliamentary Committee on Trade, Tourism and Industry, the UAFMA chairman, Aimable Mbarushimana, the operations director for Murwana J.Peter Stores Limited said owing to the pandemic which necessitated self-sustenance of economies, it is only logical that local manufacturers of animal feeds are protected and empowered to produce the feeds.
Mbarushimana said economies world over are currently involved in import substitution, noting that the same needs to happen for Uganda in regards to animal feeds by manufacturing them locally other than importing them.
David Waliggo, a policy, legal and tax consultant with UAFMA said local manufacturers have the capacity to produce the imported feeds locally and that this way, the entire agriculture supply chain that starts from the farmer up to the dealers will have been supported in terms of job creation.
Waliggo said it is high time Uganda moved away from being a dumping place for products of European and Asian countries by producing goods which are currently being imported into the country.During the same session, Uganda Revenue Authority defended the tax saying it is not new but rather correcting what had for long been misclassified by importers as premixes yet they are concentrates.
