'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.