Museveni summons NRM caucus over Sugar Bill

Kampala. President Museveni has summoned the National Resistance Movement (NRM) parliamentary caucus to discuss the controversial Sugar Bill, which was returned to Parliament for review after he refused to assent to it last month.

Daily Monitor learnt last evening that Mr Museveni wants to meet the MPs to convince them to pass the Bill with the amendments he proposed. The House was supposed to debate the report of the Committee on Trade and Tourism, and the minority report on the Bill at 10am today but the debate has been postponed to 2pm.
The deputy chairperson of the NRM caucus, Mr Solomon Silwany (Bukooli Central), confirmed the meeting with the President will be held at the Office of the Prime Minister.

“I can confirm the caucus has been called and the Sugar Bill is on the agenda,” he said.
Asked why the caucus would discuss the Sugar Bill at the time when the House was supposed to debate the two reports, Mr Silwany said: “May be the President has something to tell us before we go to plenary.”
A section of MPs on Friday were furious when Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah deferred the debate on the two reports when they were tabled.

The MPs accused Mr Oulanyah of “playing games” after deferring the debate while the minority report was being presented by Masaka District Woman MP Mary Babirye Kabanda.

Kagoma County MP Moses Muwanika last Friday said MPs from the sugarcane growing areas of Busoga Sub-region would rally their colleagues to oppose the committee report, which recommends the introduction of zoning of sugarcane millers.

It is a norm of the NRM caucus to be summoned to take a decision on how the House should vote on a contentious Bill because of their numerical advantage in the House. The ruling party has more than 300 out of the 459 members in the House.

Zoning, which Mr Museveni prefers and was one of the reasons he rejected the Sugar Bill 2016, is a system of allocating a specific area of sugar cane production to one manufacturer to grow and crash the cane.
It defines a specific area where a sugar company or processor should not engage in sugar production where there exists another.
The President returned the Bill to Parliament, saying it did not address the “concerns of big manufacturers” in sugar production and warned MPs that allowing the small processors would distort the industry.

The sugarcane farmers in Busoga and Bunyoro sub-regions are opposed to the zoning on account that it will make them lose market for their sugarcane since the big factories crash cane grown in their own plantations.
Sugarcane farmers under the Uganda Sugarcane Growers’ Associations have petitioned the Speaker of Parliament, demanding that the House should not re-debate and pass the Sugar Bill 2016 without hearing from them.

The April 25 petition, in which they accuse the committee of not inviting them to respond to Mr Museveni’s issues, was received by the Speaker’s office yesterday.
The petition is signed by Mr Michael Mugabira, the association’s coordinator.
The farmers are urging Parliament not to debate the committee report, which recommends zoning of sugar millers/factories as suggested by Mr Museveni.
The farmers say the zoning only favours the big processors or investors in the sugar industry who grow their own sugar cane.

“Zoning (‘Ring-fencing of Markets’) through Government Imposed-Monopolies is an outdated 15th - 18th century Mercantile thinking that believes in wealth accumulation by rent-seeking behaviours i.e., in this case farmers’ land (private property) is grabbed/colonised for production for a particular mill,” the petition reads in part.

What MPs say

Main view. The committee report presented by Mr Robert Kasule Sebunya (Nansana Municipality) on Friday recommended that small millers should not be established within 25km radius of a big manufacturer. The committee recommended that small millers found within a radio of 25km of a big manufacturer be relocated and it proposed a Shs50b budget to compensate all that will be affected.

Different view. However, in their minority report, the dissenting committee members noted that it will be disastrous to relocate established millers. “Any attempt to relocate established millers, which are currently within 25km radius, will certainly be a disaster to the notional economy and image, especially in this era of liberalisation. It will equally erode investor confidence if the already licensed investors cannot be protected by the very government that licensed their operations,” the minority report reads in part.

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