MPs have said that all Ugandan properties abroad should be managed by the country’s foreign missions and not a private company; Uganda Property Holdings Limited (UPHL).

This recommendation is aimed to reduce losses and is part of a report by the parliamentary committee on Foreign Affairs unveiled last week.

“Parliament should investigate the management of UPHL in relation to the management of assets and revenue collection,” said Rose Mutonyi, the committee chairperson.

Much of the money collected by UPHL is spent on operational costs and the report found that only Shs 150m of the Shs 6.7bn collected in the financial year 2015/16 was remitted to government.

“The committee was informed by the management of UPHL in Mombasa that in the financial year 2015/16, only Shs 6.7bn was generated from 22 properties plus two from London, of which Shs 4.3bn was spent on operational costs and a further Shs2.2bn reinvested, leaving Shs150m as the net profit to be shared by stakeholders,” reads the report.

“And yet a single building,  Uganda House in Nairobi, in its dilapidated form fetched Shs1.06bn in remittances to the consolidated fund in 2015/16. The government of Uganda is, therefore, getting a raw deal from UPHL,” the report says.

The report, which will be debated after MPs return from recess on December 20, 2016, also found that Ugandan missions in Khartoum, Abuja and Cairo did not have substantive heads of mission.

According to the committee, the host countries may view this as a lack of commitment by Uganda to maintain diplomatic relations. The committee urged the ministry of Foreign Affairs to conduct a human resource audit of all missions and engage the ministries of public service and finance on a phased approach to filling the existing gaps.

The committee also noted that Uganda risks losing prime land in Nigeria and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia due to failure to develop it.

A 2.5 acre piece of land in Nigeria may be repossessed due to failure by government to develop it while another 2.5 acre piece of land fully paid by government in Adis Ababa has been encroached upon by a private developer who has since fenced it off.

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