Pricewater House Coopers
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Location:Communications House 10th Floor1 Colville Stree Kampala Uganda  PWC: Africa has resources to handle its economy – CEOs The Africa CEO Forum in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, speakers on various panels shared their belief that Africa has the necessary tools to develop by making use of its own resources.The continent, they said, thus possesses the means to take back its future into its own hands.Pierre-Antoine Balum, a Partner and Africa Advisor at PWC, while presenting the results of an opinion poll to African CEOs during the conference, underlined the growing importance of African consumers´ demands. African CEOs are the best placed both in terms of awareness of and responding to these expectations.The poll shows, moreover, that 87% of respondents believe that the success of a company is not measured only by the size of its profits. Instead, African consumers are showing a growing interest in company culture, company management, company training programmes and the impact companies have on civil society.Read more ▪ Foreign firms should pay taxes, says PwC boss Foreign companies and individuals operating businesses in Uganda have to meet their investment obligations by paying taxes to government instead of asking for incentives, the deputy chief executive of PricewaterhouseCoopers Southern Africa, Mr Ignatius Sehoole, has said.Giving a key note address during the 20th annual seminar of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Uganda in Entebbe, Mr Sehoole, said: “Foreign companies must abide by the laws of the country they are operating in, so foreign companies operating in Uganda have got to pay required taxes as stipulated in the law.”By law world over, companies operating in foreign countries pay income taxes to the country in which those profits were earned out of their investment, but in Uganda many foreign companies/investors tend to ask for tax incentives.Read more ▪  PWC: Optimism Abounds for East Africa The African continent continues to attract the interest of global investors, developers and operators searching for growth, new report has revealed.While there are short term concerns in some of Africa’s regions, the opportunities abound for infrastructure investment and development.Infrastructure spend in the region is projected to reach $180bn per annum, according to PwC’s ‘Capital Projects & infrastructure in East Africa, Southern Africa and West Africa, according to the report.The Ugandan government has since invited investors to finance projects in key industries including agriculture, infrastructure and natural resources.This includes a PPP project, the Kampala – Jinja Road (77.1 km), which will generate regional impact as the main gateway for exports and imports to the port of Mombasa on the Kenya coast not only for Uganda but also for the other landlocked Eastern African nations: Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Eastern DRC, enabling greater regional integration and dramatically reducing the cost of doing business in the region. Read more ▪ African chief executive officers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Uganda African chief executive officers (CEOs) have named technological advancement, urbanisation and demographic shifts as the top three factors that will transform businesses on the continent over the next five years.In a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) titled Africa Business Agenda, the CEOs note that technology advances at 69 per cent, urbanisation 67 per cent and demographic shifts at 63 per cent as the top three defining trends that will transform their businesses over the next five years.The report compiles results from 260 CEOs in Africa and includes insights from business and public sector leaders from 18 countries including Uganda. Commenting on the report, Mr Suresh Kana, a Senior Partner for PwC Africa who issued the report in South Africa said: “We are also seeing more use of technological innovation and products, with no less than 91 per cent of African CEOs either recognising the need to change their investments or in the process of doing so. Similarly, 85 per cent said the same about data analytics.” Read more ▪ Private sector asks government to allocate budget resources to vital sectors The private sector has demanded that government cuts down on its consumption expenditure in the forthcoming national budget and instead allocate the resources equitably in key development sectors like infrastructure.Speaking at a media launch of the East African Business Summit in Kampala yesterday, Mr Francis Kamulegeya, country senior partner, PriceWaterhouseCoopers Uganda said tough measures should be undertaken to ensure fiscal discipline and reduce public spending in unproductive sectors.“We know the government has limited resources but the most important thing is to exercise fiscal discipline and ensure that the limited resources are allocated in an equitable manner,” he said. He added: “The private sector is keen on seeing government spending public funds on key infrastructure projects and critical sectors that will help unlock the potential of the country.” Read more ▪  Report on recoverable oil costs coming out, says government The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) has said a second audit process of recoverable oil expenditures is ongoing and a report will be tabled soon in Parliament for discussion.The audit in works covers among others, oil fields-Blocks 1 and 3 A (operated by Tullow) for the years 2009, 2010 and 2011.It is being conducted by both the OAG and two private audit consultancy firms, PriceWaterHouse Coopers and Ernst & Young.The director of audit-Central Government 2, Mr Joseph Hirya, revealed last week that the process is intended to recover monies claimed in activities by the International Oil Companies and to probe their operations.“This is a value-for-money audit,” Mr Hirya, said at a workshop organised by Makerere University, Global Rights Alert and Pay What You Publish-Norway. Read more ▪ 500 African auditors to attend conference in Uganda Uganda is to host the first African Federation of Institutes of Internal Auditors (AFIIA), which is to bring together over 500 auditing professionals from across the world.Sponsored by the Vision Group and Pricewater House Coopers, the three-day conference will start on April 6 at the Commonwealth Resort Munyonyo. The commissioner for inspection and internal audit at the ministry of finance, Dr. Fixon Akonya, told journalists at the Media Centre in Kampala that Mervyn King, the chairman of South Africa’s King committee on corporate governance which produced King I, II and III, will address the conference. Uganda’s auditor general John Muwanga and his counterparts from Kenya and Tanzania will also address the conference under the theme, “unity in diversity, one continent, one internal auditing profession.”According to Akonya, the general conference will be preceded by the workshop of leaders of institutes in africa on April 6-7, 2014, and the board and audit committee workshop on April 8.“These events will bring together leaders of internal audit institutes and internal audit professionals from across the continent. It is the first of its kind in Africa,” he said.The auditors are to discuss ways to improve governance, risk management and controls across the continent. Read more ▪ |