Dubai Rental Services and Solutions loses case against TANESCO, SYMBION

HIGH Court of Tanzania has dismissed a suit filed by Dubai based firm, Rental Services and Solutions (RSS) against Tanzania Electricity Supply Company (TANESCO) and Symbion Power Tanzania Limited.

Commenting on the ruling in Dar es Salaam over the weekend, Symbion Power Senior Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Adi Raval said, “The High Court’s ruling justifies and corroborates Symbion’s position that the suit was spurious.”

He said they have been pleased by the ruling, describing the lawsuit as frivolous and simply aimed at embarrassing the defendants. The suit contained a number of strange claims and was perpetrated by the company that had operated illegally in Tanzania for almost three years, denying the Tanzanian government a colossal amount of money in tax revenues.

Raval said, “We were shocked when we discovered that this subcontractor was neither a properly registered business nor paid corporate tax of 30 percent like other companies which operate in Tanzania.

In comparison, during the same time, Symbion Power Tanzania paid the Tanzania Revenue Authority about 50 million US dollars in tax.

” RSS filed the lawsuit at the High Court in April, this year, accusing Symbion and Tanesco of failure to pay it 28 million dollars (over 57m/-) of the 77.6 million dollars it earned in revenue from power sales during the period of the contract.

RSS, a generator and air cooling rental firm, supplied equipment to Symbion for emergency power in Dodoma and Arusha. During the time RSS was based in Tanzania and had expatriates and local staff for its operations.

However, Symbion argued against paying RSS any more money than they had already been paid in case they default on paying TRA what they owe them. Tanzanian law requires all companies operating in Tanzania to pay corporation tax and VAT