Bound to ‘mivumba’ by poverty

By Patrick LugandaUgandans, VIPs inclusive are addicted to the mivumba. It does not matter that President Yoweri Museveni is not amused and complains that the VIPs are wearing property left behind by the dead. The President in his wisdom has spared Ugandans and allowed them to continue enjoying the mivumba. However, consumers may have to pay more to absorb a likely rise in taxes.“About protecting the local market our business people should be protected. We want to put taxes on second hand clothes. We have just won an election. If we introduce taxes early, by the time of the next elections our critics will have given up,” Museveni told a cabinet retreat at Kyankwanzi.Viren Thakkher, the managing director of NYTIL Picfare, the only operational textile mill says that slapping the taxes on the second hand clothes will help build confidence in the textile industry and attract investment on the production sector.Dealers in the second hand clothes industry fear that thousands of people depending on the second hand clothes and shoes stand to lose their livelihood as they are edged out of business. “There should be sufficient research before such steps are taken. The second hand clothes business employs more than 50,000 people in Kampala and the suburbs. There are thousands more people employed in the towns and rural areas of the country. Many of these are women who are supporting families and paying taxes. These so called investors who are being protected cannot even employ 5000 people,” says James Musoke along Burton Street.An international study carried out by the Swiss Academy for Development on the trade in donated clothes in Switzerland to Ghana and Tunisia found out that: “The key reason for the high demand for second-hand clothing both in Tunisia and Ghana is the low purchasing power of the majority of the population. In both countries, structural transformations of the economy have been brought about as a consequence of Structural Adjustment Programmes, which impose high social costs on the population. A large proportion of the population is affected by poverty.” Rueben Kulumba a second hand clothes importer on Namirembe road suggests that the President should have consulted the importers and key operators in the industry before coming up with his proposals. “The clothes are valued according to the weight of the container. The charge is 89 cents of a dollar per kilogram. This means that taxes alone are $8900 for a 10,000 kilograms consignment. When that is added to the freight charges and initial purchase price in the country of origin, the cost of the clothes shoots up. Additional taxation will just make it worse for the final consumer,” says an importer on condition of anonymity.Despite the rise in the cost of the second hand clothes people are not about to abandon them. It is big time business for many companies in the West who see a market in the third world.