The exorbitant price of hiring a luxury car in Uganda’s capital is being blamed on a miss management of funds supplied for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala. Reports compare car hire prices in the U.K. with costs during CHOGM. They say that hiring a BMW 5 Series in the U.K. for and eight day period would have cost 700 Euros in the U.K. for a seven day period of hire through Avis Prestige but cost 16,000 for the same period during CHOGM in Kampala. This price rose to 22,000 Euros when transportation costs were included.

Many would now like to know who is to be held accountable for such extreme discrepancies in prices. It appears that the inflated prices may get blamed on the fact that acquiring transportation solutions was left to the last minute and that is why prices were unnecessarily high. However there is a letter from the deputy secretary of the treasury Keith Muhakanizi pointing out that he did not want to find the organizers of CHOGM in a position where they were pushed into a corner over the cost of providing car rental solutions, especially as there was more than enough time to shop around for the cheapest available car hire deals. Kampala knew it would be hosting CHOGM at least two years in advance and so there was indeed plenty of time to sort out any transportation issues well ahead of time.

Reports however say that the works ministry dragged its feet for eight months and ended up taking on car hire that would end up costing 22,000 Euros per 5 Series BMW.