Museveni says Vitol deal cut Uganda’s fuel import costs by up to USD 36 a tonne

KAMPALA – President Yoweri Museveni says a supply arrangement Uganda signed with global energy trader Vitol in 2023 cut what the country pays per tonne of imported fuel by between USD 35 and USD 36, after years in which he said civil servants bought the products through middlemen in Kenya.

In a statement issued after his 82nd birthday on 15 September, Museveni said the initial agreement, dated 18 August 2023, reduced the per-tonne price of diesel from USD 118 to USD 83, a cut of USD 35. He said petrol fell from USD 97.5 to USD 61.5, a cut of USD 36, and aviation fuel from USD 114.25 to USD 79.25, a cut of USD 35.

He described Vitol as a bulk supplier with refineries in several parts of the world.

Museveni said the deal ended an arrangement under which senior civil servants, including permanent secretaries and commissioners, bought petroleum products for the whole country by tendering to middlemen in Kenya. He said he did not know about the practice until a Kenyan politician, whom he identified as Senator Jirongo, told him around 2019.

He said he immediately directed Irene Muloni, who was energy minister at the time, to deal with the problem, but nothing changed until Uganda linked up with Vitol in 2023.

Museveni tied the procurement problem to the period after the fall of Idi Amin, when his government returned career civil servants to run the administration after accusing Amin of placing people without formal education in charge of state affairs.

“It was much later that we discovered that those civil servants (PS, Commissioners, etc.), were ruining the Country,” he wrote.

The President thanked Kenyan President William Ruto, who he said had overcome resistance from unnamed actors in Kenya to the new arrangement. He said the Kenyan government now allows Uganda to pump its products through the Kenya oil pipeline and has allowed Uganda to hold a 20.15 percent shareholding in it.

“We are very happy with the Kenya Government of President Ruto on this matter,” he wrote.

Museveni said he was setting the record straight after some Kenyan media, in his words, added “pilipili”, or red pepper, to remarks he made when he laid the foundation stone for a 320-million-litre fuel storage facility at Buyala. He did not name the outlets or say which reports he was disputing.

In the same statement, Museveni thanked what he said were eight million people who sent him birthday messages, and said he hoped to live to 100 and that his wife, Janet Museveni, would reach 96.

He also urged Africans to pursue economic integration through a common market, political integration where possible, including the proposed East African Federation, and undugu, the Swahili word for brotherhood, among the continent’s four linguistic groups, to avoid what he called “future calamity”.