KAMPALA — A coalition of roughly 60 Ugandan subcontractors owed $9.7 million for work on the Tilenga oil project’s worker camp has petitioned Uganda’s Finance Minister for an emergency administrative stay, days before a tax amnesty deadline that the companies say they cannot meet because their own capital remains frozen in an unresolved payment dispute.
The petition, dated June 24 and addressed to the Commissioner General of the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), was submitted by a group identifying itself as the “KBJV Creditors TUSP 4000-Person Camp” coalition, representing local firms contracted by the KarmodBeta Joint Venture (KBJV) between 2021 and 2023 to build the Tilenga Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) camp — a 4,000-person facility housing the project’s workforce. The companies say they delivered electrical, fabrication, plumbing, ICT, fire safety and other technical services to the full satisfaction of project stakeholders, but have gone unpaid for more than three years.
KBJV is a Tier 2 contractor on Tilenga, one of Uganda’s flagship upstream oil developments operated by TotalEnergies EP Uganda (TEPU). The joint venture was formed in 2021 between Uganda’s BETA-JMG and Kenya’s Karmod specifically to bid for the EPC camp contract, partly to satisfy local-content requirements. The camp itself sat beneath a much larger Tier 1 contract — a roughly $2 billion award to McDermott and Sinopec, the largest single package issued under Tilenga.
According to independent reporting corroborating the coalition’s account, about 60 subcontractors are claiming roughly $9.7 million in unpaid dues tied to KBJV, a figure that has already been reduced from an original, broader dispute of approximately $31 million after mediation by the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) unlocked partial settlements. PAU has mediated repeatedly between the contractors, KBJV, and project stakeholders including TEPU and McDermott Uganda.
The companies say the unpaid invoices have already passed independent scrutiny. PAU tasked TEPU, as licensee, with commissioning a forensic audit of the claims, which was carried out by Deloitte Kenya after subcontractors submitted thousands of pages of verified records; that audit process is understood to have concluded, though its scope had to be revised and expanded along the way. Despite this, the coalition says disbursement of audited funds has not followed.
The tax deadline collision
The dispute has taken on new urgency because of a separate, unrelated deadline: the expiry of Uganda’s current tax amnesty. Under Section 47B of the Tax Procedures Code Act, the Uganda Revenue Authority is offering its third and most extensive waiver of accumulated interest and penalties, allowing taxpayers to clear outstanding principal tax dating to June 30, 2024 by June 30, 2026 in exchange for full forgiveness of penalties and interest. Taxpayers who pay only part of the principal owed as of that date still qualify for a pro-rated waiver of interest and penalties tied to the portion paid.
URA has been emphatic that the deadline is final. Commissioner General John Musinguzi has stated this will be the authority’s last tax amnesty, with no further extensions, and the agency’s public messaging has stressed there will be “no July offer” and “no August extension,” framing June 30 as the absolute cutoff.
The Tilenga subcontractors argue this leaves them in an impossible position. Their petition states that the principal tax they owe cannot be paid because the cash to pay it — money owed to them by KBJV for completed work — has been “frozen in the Tilenga project pipeline for over 36 months.” Without that capital, they say, the June 30 deadline will pass and trigger full reinstatement of penalties and interest on top of an already unrecovered $9.7 million.
Wider fallout
The companies say the consequences extend beyond the immediate tax exposure. Lacking URA Tax Clearance Certificates because of the unresolved liabilities, the firms say they are now legally barred from bidding on other commercial and oil-sector contracts — cutting off the revenue that might otherwise help service the bank debt many took on to meet international compliance and safety standards required by the project’s operators.
That account aligns with broader reporting on the dispute. Businesspeople involved have said local companies borrowed heavily from banks, sold assets and exhausted savings to deliver the camp, only to be left in a prolonged standoff that has cost jobs and, in some cases, shut businesses down entirely. Because invoices remain unpaid, the strain has also reached the national treasury: the government is being deprived of tax revenue from the affected firms even as those firms lose the compliance status needed to keep operating in the sector.
Industry observers have noted the timing is particularly sensitive given the project’s progress. Tilenga’s central processing facility is on track for first oil by July 2026, with the broader project reported at 63 percent completion, raising questions among local firms about whether participation in the country’s flagship oil development became, in the coalition’s words, “a financial trap” rather than the springboard for local industry it was promoted as.
What is being requested
The petition does not ask URA to alter national tax policy. It asks the Minister to use ministerial and administrative authority to grant the roughly 60 affected firms a group-specific, provisional extension or stay on the June 30 deadline pending release of the audited funds; to direct URA to temporarily freeze further penalty and interest accrual on these specific liabilities; and to provide inter-ministerial support to expedite recovery of the outstanding payments from the project’s developers. The letter was copied to URA’s Commissioner General, PAU’s Executive Director, and TotalEnergies EP Uganda.
Neither URA, PAU nor TotalEnergies EP Uganda had publicly responded to the petition as of publication. The amnesty deadline the coalition is seeking relief from expires Tuesday, June 30.
