By Mulengera Reporters
State Minister for Housing Princess Parsis Namuganza on Tuesday told off owners and directors of Kakira Sugar Works and other giants in the sugar manufacturing business to accept competition and stop panicking while working hard towards frustrating new entrants into the lucrative business.
Speaking at the Tuesday crisis meeting Trade Minister David Bahati convened at Kampala’s Imperial Royale Hotel, Namuganza said government wasn’t going to tolerate sabotage by sugar giants aimed at preserving their monopoly status. She said Uganda is now a free market economy where government regulatory mandate can’t be manipulated and used to shield monopolies against competition.
David Bahati was instigated by the Speaker of Parliament to convene the meeting after sugarcane growers’ associations from especially Buganda, Busoga, Bunyoro and other cane-growing regions petitioned government protesting the recent confiscation of roadside weigh bridges by Police.
On 17th March 2026, Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja (purporting to act on the anti-weigh bridges letter authored by Trade Minister Francis Mwebesa) directed Police to mount an operation indiscriminately removing all roadside weigh bridges in Buganda and Busoga sub regions.
The Premier indicated this was aimed at safeguarding and protecting the integrity of the sugar manufacturing industry. This was after some of the giant millers like Kakira, Kinyara and others had registered their resentment towards the same.
Their claim was that weigh bridges were providing cover for poor quality, premature and stolen cane to come to the market.
In their petition, sugarcane growers’ leaders (led by Peterson Mubiru & G Mwanaki Isabirye) asserted that the Premier’s directive was unsustainable as it was based on wrong information and desire to protect the interests of giant millers like Kakira and Kinyara whose top executives hoped to use that ban to strangle newer entrants and smaller millers out of the sugar manufacturing business.
At the Bahati meeting, hundreds of farmers, representatives of smaller millers and other stakeholders cheered as Parsis Namuganza fearlessly made a case against bigger millers.
She never mentioned specific names but her utterances were largely construed to be in reference to Kakira Sugar Works which is based in Busoga where she too comes from. Kakira had all along been bashed during the plenary as its representatives were heckled into silence and off the microphone.
Namuganza said Bukono County in Namutumba district which she represents is one of the sugarcane-growing areas of Uganda and that her voters too had separately petitioned government objecting to Nabbanja’s directive.
As cane growers chanted “Princess our incoming Speaker,” Namuganza also revealed she had represented Deputy Prime Minister Rebecca Kadaga.
She said government, and other elected leaders from cane-growing areas, wasn’t going to merely look on and do nothing as gains achieved through the Sugar Amendment Act enacted last year (2025) are eroded by sugar manufacturing giants who are scared and envious of new entrants simply because they want to continue earning super normal profits while preserving their cartel-like monopoly status in the sugar industry.
Namuganza defended the new entrants’ right to be in the market and compete on grounds that such assures cane farmers of access to competitive prices.
She debunked claims by representatives of Kinyara and Kakira at the meeting that allowing roadside weigh bridges was promoting theft of cane and child labor. She made it clear that there will always be child Labour at sugarcane plantations regardless of whether there are weigh bridges or not.
A representative of URA Abbey Katumba had aided the argument of Kakira and Kinyara representatives at the meeting by claiming that URA’s efforts to collect adequate taxes from the sugar industry were being hampered by weigh bridges operations.
Namuganza branded URA officials ‘lazy collectors’ and demanded to know why the Authority, whose operation budget has over the years been expanding, doesn’t recruit enough officers to be deployed and each and every weigh bridge location.
The URA man, speaking during the plenary, had advocated for abolition of weigh bridges on grounds that it’s easier for URA to collect all the payable taxes once all sugarcane sells and purchases are effected only at the factory, just like the representatives of Kinyara and Kakira were advocating.
He claimed that the sugar sector was growing in revenue and everything including export volumes but tax revenues weren’t growing. He said this was because of the fact that roadside weigh bridge operations were making it hard for the taxman to accurately ascertain taxes that are payable on all the transactions.
Namuganza observed that all the same, the sugar industry is already paying a lot of taxes to URA as even final product itself is taxed. Their total comes to 4% of the entire collection URA makes annually. Players like Lugazi-based SCOUL pay up over Shs120bn and GM Sugar pays over Shs70bn even when it’s a much smaller player.
Bahati demanded that Abbey Katumba reveals how much the sugar industry contributes annually in absolute terms beyond mere percentage (of 4%) but the URA rep didn’t know.
Bahati, who emphasized that the sugar industry is too important to Uganda’s economy because it accounts for 10% of Uganda’s GDP, asked him to step out and make phone calls and report back but still the young man from URA couldn’t readily provide the answer.
Evelyn Anite, the Minister of Investments, also spoke at the meeting and condemned bigger sugar manufacturers for harboring monopolistic tendencies which she said won’t be tolerated in today’s Uganda. She called on the larger manufacturers to accept competition which she said in the long term is good for every stakeholder-the farmers who benefit from competitive pricing, the government from enlarged tax collection, the young people who benefit through the resultant job creation and the millers themselves.
Namuganza said that a lot of effort had gone into processing the new law on sugar and called on sugar giants to respect the government and all the stakeholders who spent years working on the same. Ministers Namuganza and Anite called on sugar giants to respect the President who directed long time ago to have roadside weigh bridges in place. The weigh bridges enable a farmer to determine the tonnage of his cane so as to be able to ascertain how much he has supplied and subsequently be able to compare what the miller declares to be the quantity of his cane.
Anite said the same (reliance on roadside weigh bridges) is permitted under both the amended sugar Act and the relevant regulations. The same has full backing of both Parliament and Cabinet. Former Minister Aston Kajara, who these days is a sugarcane grower back home in Kyenjojo where he heads an out growers’ association, warned that if sugar giants are not tamed Uganda risks a sugar crisis or even collapse similar to what Kenya faced.
As the growers chanted ‘our man Kajara,’ the former Minister said that Uganda’s tea sector was killed because of similar greed and the same shouldn’t be allowed to happen to Uganda’s sugar sector. As Kajara spoke, the audience chorused “crack up RAI because they are the bad guys who must be tamed and now.”
Some of the farmers during the plenary session accused Kinyara and Kakira for behaving in a way that has caused ordinary farmers in both Busoga and Bunyoro to doubt the authority of Gen Museveni as the country’s President.
The two giants, whose representatives at the meeting were heckled into silence, were accused of disrespecting the President by disregarding all his sugar industry-related directives issued at the meetings the big man addressed late last year as he looked for the vote.
That Museveni directed the stopping of the 5% that millers chop off the price per ton but Kakira has continued imposing that cost of cane farmers. They have also remained hostile and resisted transparency when farmers demand to witness as their cane is being measured at their weigh bridge locations. That farmers are merely chased away and asked to go away and return the following day to know how much their cane weighed! This was condemned as unacceptable criminal exploitation.
Kakira, which is owned by the Madhvanis Group, was accused of operating a cheating weigh bridge system in Kayunga where farmers get surrounded by soldiers who intimidate them into silence whenever they protest cheating and under declaration of their tonnage at the weigh bridge.
In the end, David Bahati announced that the roadside weigh bridges were staying except that there will now be stringent regulation. UNBS was also directed to deploy and become more visible in the community and at the millers’ premises to ensure effective calibration so that the farmers cane isn’t under declared.
URA was directed to leverage its budget and deploy enough officers at every weigh bridge location as opposed to demanding closure. Bahati wondered why URA would have a problem deploying enough officers to enforce tax collection from a sector which contributes more than Shs1trn annually in tax collection.
Bahati assured farmers and all stakeholders that the roadside weigh bridges were staying because it’s what all stakeholders want and that this exactly is what he was going to report back to the Speaker of Parliament. Stakeholders present also vehemently bashed the Sugar Stakeholders Council members for being inefficient.
Many speaking from the plenary demanded for the reconstitution of the Sugar Council in order to reduce the influence of big millers like Kinyara whose Director Rai also serves as Council Chairman. The Council was castigated for being too biased in favour of sugar giants and for not doing enough to protect the interests of sugarcane growers.
Rai’s representative Counsel Alfred Stanley Odong tried to defend his boss but was shut up by Minister Evelyn Anite (who co-chaired the meeting with David Bahati) as cane farmers chanted “our incorruptible Ministers Oyeee.”
To demonstrate the extent to which some of the sugar giants can go to circumvent regulatory scrutiny, Roger Rwampanyi (a Masindi-based weigh bridge owner) told the three Ministers about a High Court Judge who was recently offered $3m (roughlyShs9bn) to rule a case in favour of one of the big millers.
Rwampanyi displayed a copy of the New Vision of 29th January 2026 where the Judge was quoted as confessing to have refused such dirty money with the contempt it deserved. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
