'Ksh.350 million is nothing,' Kenyatta-linked NCBA bank says ready to pay tax waived
NCBA Managing
Director John Gachora has admitted that the bank benefited from a Ksh.350
million tax waiver during the merger between NIC Group PLC and Commercial Bank
of Africa (CBA) back in 2019.
Gachora however, says should the court find NCBA to have contravened any tax-related law, following the waiver which has been a subject of public debate, then they will pay without hesitation.
“I want to assure the
public and every Kenyan that should the court find that NCBA was not entitled
to that waiver, the day the court makes that determination, I can promise that the
following day we will send a cheque of Ksh. 350 million to the exchequer,” Gachora told KTN News on Thursday night.
The MD cited the
banks' history in meeting its tax obligations saying that the Ksh. 350 million
was only but a fraction of billions of shillings the lender had been paying to
the tax man annually.
“People need to
understand that the waiver was given to the NCBA or the merging parties. With 26,000
shareholders behind the banks that were merging. In the same year that we got the
waiver of Ksh.350 million we paid total taxes of Ksh.4.4 billion the same year,
more than 10 times the waiver the people are talking about,” he said.
“NCBA is one of the biggest
taxpayers. In 2021, we paid taxes of Ksh.6.7 billion, in 2022, we paid
Ksh. 14.3 billion in taxes. Ksh.350 million in the context of what we pay in
taxes is nothing.”
The former Treasury Cabinet
Secretary Henry Rotich on September 27, 2019, exempted the merged CBA
and NIC bank from paying share transfer tax.
The non-banking
holding company became NCBA Group Plc and the Kenyan subsidiary of the merged
entity became NCBA Bank Kenya Plc.
NIC group
shareholders got 47 per cent of the merged entity and CBA shareholders who
included former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s family, had 53 per cent of the merged
entity.
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