Property mogul, Dr Sudhir Ruparelia
Property mogul, Dr Sudhir Ruparelia has asked the government to extend business reliefs to enable economic recovery of businesses that are struggling as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It is also my prayer that the government extends, into 2021 and possibly 2022, many of the credit relief and tax administration measures it had put in place at the peak of the first wave, to aid quicker economic recovery,” Dr Sudhir said in a New Year statement issued on December 31.
In April 2020, the government through Uganda Revenue Authority announced the various initiatives among them the credit relief measures and the tax administration measures aimed at easing some pain for the private sector.
According to Dr Sudhir, the founder and chairman of the Ruparelia Group, observing the Covid-19 mitigation Standard Operating Procedures (SoPs) is essential for the reopening of the economy almost fully, saving jobs as well as raising the necessary tax revenue to keep many of the government programmes running.
In April 2020, at least 4200 companies across the country shut down as a result of Covid-19 lockdown after they failed to maintain the workers and other SoPs that were issued President Museveni and the Ministry of Health that required the factories to keep their staff on site if they were to continue operating during the lockdown.
According to the Ministry of trade statement, the country’s imports fell from $711.9m (about Shs2.7 trillion) in January 2020 to $593.7m (about Shs2.2 trillion) in March while exports reduced from $383.6m (Shs1.4 trillion) in January to $352.9m (Shs1.3 trillion) in February.
Dr Sudhir also the Honorary Consul of Nepal to Uganda, described the year 2020 as the most challenging for his company that was established more than 30 years ago saying that the company which is among the major employers was forced to shut down doors to thousands of its staff and customers which is one of the hardest things we had to do.
“As a group, we reached deep within ourselves for some innovations such as online learning across all our educational institutions, put in place extra health and safety standards at our buildings and hotels and adopted home working for some of the non-essential staff. Most importantly, we still kept thousands of jobs,” revealed Dr Sudhir while commending individuals and business entities, who responded to the president to raise more than Shs17bn in cash and Shs33bn in kind to aid government Covid-19 relief efforts.
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