{"id":70614,"date":"2023-11-15T07:15:01","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T04:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kfm.co.ug\/?p=70614"},"modified":"2023-11-15T09:21:20","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T06:21:20","slug":"mps-approve-bill-giving-govt-oil-import-monopoly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/mps-approve-bill-giving-govt-oil-import-monopoly\/","title":{"rendered":"MPs approve Bill giving govt oil import monopoly"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY ELIZABETH KAMURUNGI <\/span>& ARTHUR ARNOLD WADERO<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Parliament yesterday passed the Pe<\/span>troleum Supply (Amendment) Act, <\/span>2023 granting Uganda National Oil <\/span>Company a monopoly on supply<\/span>ing petroleum products, against warn<\/span>ings that the move could instead worsen <\/span>the problem it is intended to cure.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bill first tabled before Parliament <\/span>on October 31, was expeditiously proc<\/span>essed, and passed by a quorum of 186 <\/span>members announced by Speaker Anita <\/span>Among who presided over the sitting.<\/span><\/p>\n

If assented to by the President as passed, <\/span>the law will \u201cfacilitate the Uganda Na<\/span>tional Oil Company or such other person <\/span>nominated by the Minister, with the ap<\/span>proval of Cabinet, to import all Petrole<\/span>um Products, as listed in the third Sched<\/span>ule, destined for the Ugandan market to <\/span>guarantee security of supply of Petroleum<\/span>\u00a0Products in the country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

UNOC is a limited Liability Company <\/span>owned by the Government of Uganda <\/span>(GOU), mandated to handle the State\u2019s <\/span>commercial interests in the petroleum <\/span>sub-sector. <\/span>Until yesterday\u2019s amendment, importa- <\/span>tion of petroleum products was done in<\/span>dependently by the licensed Ugandan oil <\/span>marketing companies through structures <\/span>in Kenya and Tanzania.<\/span><\/p>\n

The amendment also deleted para<\/span>graph of Section 3 of the Principal Act <\/span>that sought to \u201cencourage and promote <\/span>fair competition within the petroleum <\/span>supply market, to eliminate discrimina<\/span>tion or preferential treatment of any par<\/span>ticipant and to prevent monopolistic con<\/span>trol of any segment of the supply chain\u2019\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

An act passed by Parliament passed ear<\/span>lier to guarantee fair competition is also <\/span>yet to be assented to by the President <\/span>Government has argued that this move <\/span>will cure the reliance on private oil mar<\/span>keting companies and eliminate middle <\/span>men, factors they say have contributed to <\/span>instability in supply and unpredictable <\/span>pump prices.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the international prices do not go <\/span>up, we expect that we shall have compet<\/span>itive prices under this new system. All we <\/span>wanted is to make sure that we run away <\/span>from the system that has been exploiting <\/span>Uganda as the country. We hope that our <\/span>neighbors will understand this and that <\/span>we are doing this for the betterment of the people of Uganda,\u201d Ms Ruth Nankabirwa, the minister of Energy and Mineral Development, said after the Bill was passed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY ELIZABETH KAMURUNGI & ARTHUR ARNOLD WADERO Parliament yesterday passed the Petroleum Supply (Amendment) Act, 2023 granting Uganda National Oil Company a monopoly on supplying petroleum products, against warnings that the move could instead worsen the problem it is intended to cure. The Bill first tabled before Parliament on October 31, was expeditiously processed, and passed by a quorum of 186 members announced by Speaker Anita Among who presided over the sitting. If assented to by the President as passed, the law will \u201cfacilitate the Uganda National Oil Company or such other person nominated by the Minister, with the approval of Cabinet, to import all Petroleum Products, as listed in the third Schedule, destined for the Ugandan market to guarantee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":62243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2283,688,2023],"class_list":["post-70614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-oil-import-monopoly","tag-parliament","tag-unoc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kfm.dembefm.ug\/staging_h\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}