Robert Kabushenga, the former managing director of Vision Group, has claimed that government intends to advance Nelson Tugume, a businessman, an additional $36 million this year to add value to coffee. This is roughly Shs 136 billion at the current exchange rate.
In a lengthy post on X, Kabushenga, a coffee farmer and processor, said he had been reliably informed that cabinet approved this money in a meeting on Monday, April 15.
Tugume was caught up in the eye of storm early this year when it was revealed that he had received $10 million (Shs 38 billion) last year for the same purpose, money that he allegedly did not account for.
There were calls for Tugume to account for this money from various sections of the public, calls that appear to have fallen on deaf ears.
Kabushenga claimed Tugume and a few others had shared out this money and there was nothing to show that it had been well utilised.
In the cabinet meeting, Kabushenga claimed that Matia Kasaija, the minister of Finance and Dr Monica Musenero, the minister of Science, Technology and Innovation had opposed the move but they were over-ruled.
“These kinds of scams are simply money laundering projects. You sink billions in a false promise so you can extract money from the Treasury which you then externalize. The public is left holding an empty can. The best example of this is along the Old Entebbe Road at a place called Lubowa. We are supposed to have a modern medical facility giving is specialized services so we don’t have to go out of the country at an exorbitant cost. It is 9 years now and all there is, is a slab hidden behind corrugated iron sheets. So if you are expecting to find processed coffee products on the supermarket shelves or coffee shops here and overseas because millions of dollars have been given to a bunch of conmen, I suggest you manage your expectations. It is not going to happen, certainly not from Ntungamo. If you are still in doubt, check what happened with the Soroti Fruit & Atiak Sugar factories,” Kabushenga wrote on X.
Tugume has said before that part of this money was used to set up a coffee processing plant in Ntungamo which President Museveni is set to inspect on April 26, 2024.
But Kabushenga doubted anything tangible would come out of the $36 million.
“Anyway, I have been at this issue since December 2019. I am driven by the conviction that a bottom up broad process of defining the direction of the coffee sector is the only one that will deliver sustainable and sustained success. A top down muscular approach will fail. It is not the first time it has been tried. And no amount of speechifying however voluble and forceful will bring the desired outcome into existence,” he wrote.
