A top official of the Rwanda Scrap Association (RSA) has said the body is disappointed with the 2009/10 budgetary proposal to ban exportation of scrap aluminium, steel and copper wire and cables. Francis Twahirwa, one of the members of RSA, said that members of the organisation have received a scare because they are worried they could loose their daily day-to-day earnings once the proposals are implemented. Finance Minister James Musoni announced budget proposals recently that suggested that the ban was to halt vandalism and was meant to prevent uprooting of certain nfrastructure like electrical cables which is rampant in the region. The ban on scrap is one of the proposals in the budget estimates that has been agreed at the EAC level as a measure to remedy any adverse effects of the establishment of the EAC common external tariff structure. “Since April, 2007 we have been involved in this kind of business and the business had become part of us and right now we don’t know what we are going to do,” Twahirwa said during an interview with the Business Times. “We are in total shock, we still have our scrap scattered everywhere,” he added. RSA is an association that is made up of 47 members. It was formed in April, 2007. Each member of RSA has been generating an average profit of above Rwf4m per year. After the birth of RSA in 2007, members were required to channel scrap through Magerwa for screening purposes to avoid vandalism. Twahirwa said that they formed RSA so as players in the industry can be under one umbrella body and be more organised as a prerequisite of government. “Since 2007, we have been operating under a well known umbrella with all the required documents and now we are being victimied for no reason,” Twahirwa said. “We are just confused, we have been working well with the authorities even with the help of the national police. We were very shocked to hear that from 1st of July on there will be a ban on scrap exportation,” he explained. RSA has been dealing in ferrous and non-ferrous substances. Ferrous substances included iron, steal and the non-ferrous included Aluminium, Bronze and Cooper which was abandoned two years ago because the government forced them to do so. The association has been exporting the materials to neighbouring countries for the manufacturing of iron-bars, pips and iron-sheets. Twahirwa added that none of the members of the association saw a total ban coming because they were in their final touches of forming a new cooperative called Rwanda Metal Cooperative (RMC). All RSA members were to be members of RMC, each member was to contribute Rwf5m with in 30months and there starting capital was Rwf200m. According to Twahirwa, RNC was supposed to construct a Metal Melting Plant and they were planning to stop exporting to neighbouring countries. Ends
