Uganda is gearing towards reviving her national airlines, after years of being defunct, and given the fact that close to all her neighbors have their own airlines running and functional.
In the midst of the revival, there are a lot of unanswered question in regards to the ownership of the Uganda Airlines. Majority of the confusion comes from the name of the company running the brand, the time of Incorporation, and the shareholders of the airline meant to be the country’s own.
All this comes in at a time when the country is paying off the manufacturer assigned the tender to bring home new aircraft to be used by the revived force.
In the ongoing deal with Canadian manufacturer Bombardier to deliver at least 2 CRJ 900 jets by mid 2019, there is a required UGX 280 billion that has to be made by March 29 or else the manufacturer will push Uganda’s aircraft orders aside to 2022.
But the bill might fail to be passed given the state of affairs, and the failure to answer the points in question. Let’s look at the facts on the table.
Incorporation
At the start of 2017, the responsible parties queried the Uganda Registration Service Bureau (URSB) to find out whether it was possible to have the ‘Uganda Airlines’ name reserved for use. URSB advised the government in February 2017 that they still had the option of using ‘Uganda Airlines Limited’ given its availability.
With rumors circulating of a possible non-availability, the government opted to name the company ‘Uganda National Airlines Company’ (UNAC), which was incorporated on 22 January 2018 and the ‘Uganda Airlines Limited’ name was wound up. The share capital of the company was set to UGX 200 million divided into 2 million shares.
The directors of Uganda Airlines – Keith Muhakanizi (the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance) and Bageya Waiswa (the PS Works Ministry) officially registered name Uganda National Airlines Company, but the trading name is Uganda Airlines.
The Ministers of Finance and Works were each allotted 1 (one) UNAC share. The rest of the shares amounting to 1,999,998 were not allotted, with a claim that they were held in trust for flotation.
Uganda Airlines Shareholders
Until March 26th, the shareholders in the Uganda National Airlines company were not known yet the company was incorporated in January 2018.
The knowledge of the possible shareholders came about when the Lira Woman MP, Joy Atim Ongom, raised in Parliament the need to first detail the proof regarding ownership of Uganda Airlines suggesting that the Airline is 99.9 per cent privately owned by an undisclosed individual(s).
In the Parliamentary sitting of the same day, the chairperson of the Budget Committee, Hon Amos Lugoloobi read to the house a document from the Registrar of Companies that shows that the Ministries of Works and Finance each own one million shares – implying full ownership of the company.
He was backed by the Minister for Works, Eng. Ntege Azuba who lay on table documents showing 100 per cent ownership of the Airline company by the government.
The document indicated that the rest of the UNAC shares – 1,999,998 – were allotted to the government of Uganda by special resolution on 26 Mar 2019 after Parliament had received the minority report and filed at URSB on 27 Mar before Parliament sat. This implies that the shares were not in the government’s possession before that.
The key point to note here is that the shares were actually allotted to the individual ministers of Works and Finance ministries, and not the government.
Next day U-turn
A day later, the Budget committee suddenly rejected the report on government shares, on the basis that the two registered shareholders, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Works and Transport, are very sketchy and cannot be explained.
The Finance minister, Hon. Matia Kasaija admitted that the documents presented the day before by Works minister Hon. Azuba Ntege were ‘not neat’ and needed ‘to be corrected’. Both of these also admitted to being the share owners as allotted, but ‘in error’.
The URSB Registrar General, Bemanya Tumwebaze, was also called in to justify the document, and he asked parliament to ignore the new share allotment documents presented because they are of “no legal consequence”.
He stated that the allotment of shares in Uganda Airlines was done in July 2018 and therefore the documents presented were null and void since there can only be 1 allotment of shares.
