Paul Muite: The next govt should prioritise recovering funds lost through G-to-G deals

Senior Counsel Paul Muite has urged the next Ugandan government to prioritize recovering funds lost through brokers involved in the Government-to-Government (G-to-G) fuel arrangement. This comes after President Yoweri Museveni revealed that a Kenyan senator had alerted him to Uganda's practice of purchasing petroleum products through middlemen in Kenya.

Museveni stated that this revelation prompted Uganda to review its fuel procurement methods and move towards sourcing petroleum products directly from bulk suppliers. Muite concurred with Museveni's assessment, stating that the involvement of brokers in the fuel procurement framework had resulted in significant financial losses.

He called these losses "theft in plain sight" and emphasized that they contributed to the high cost of living in Uganda. Muite urged the incoming government to recover the stolen funds as a top priority for the next year. The situation has sparked renewed scrutiny of Kenya's G-to-G petroleum import arrangement following Museveni's revelations about Uganda's reliance on middlemen.

Museveni did not identify the senator who provided the information. According to figures cited by the Ugandan president, Uganda's diesel import premium fell from Ksh15,282 to Ksh10,749 per metric tonne, while the premium for petrol dropped from Ksh12,627 to Ksh7,965 after changes to its procurement system. These changes in import premiums occurred following the switch to a more direct procurement system.