Frank Mugabi
18 September 2007
Kampala — UGANDA Revenue Authority (URA) enforcement operatives and the Police last Saturday impounded over 40 bags of contraband sugar in Arua town.
The tax body's enforcement supervisor for the North, Lt. Patrick Mwesige, said the bags weighing 50kgs each were recovered from a store that had been labelled as a produce shop in Gaagaa Market, Arua's largest market place.
He said most of the sugar was from Swaziland, Thailand, South Africa and India, noting that the consignment from India was particularly a new introduction on the Ugandan black market.
"It's the first time we are recovering imported sugar from India," Mwesige said.
Mwesige observed that just like fuel, the sugar was cleared as transit goods to DR Congo and Sudan from where it was offloaded and later brought back to Uganda on bicycles through illegal routes.
URA findings, Mwesige said, revealed that smugglers had the capacity to ferry back a container of over 500 bags in just two days.
He added that checking smuggling was made harder by the porous international borderline.
"One bicycle carries one sack and yet it's impossible for us to deploy operatives on the entire border."
There are more than 300 illegal routes along the West Nile border with the DR Congo and Sudan.
Mwesige said no one had gone to claim the imported sugar.
He noted that it would be auctioned in 30 days, if no claimant turned up.
The New Vision established that any claimant would pay sh172,000 on every 50kg sack since imported sugar attracts 100% excise duty.
Last month, revenue officials auctioned 172 bags of impounded sugar in Arua district, which fetched over sh6m.
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