President-elect Yoweri Museveni yesterday maintained a bullish outlook of Uganda’s economy, social order and scorned critics of his presidency as he marked 40 years of uninterrupted rule, hinged on what political analysts have called a ‘carrot- and- stick’ approach. Officiating the 40th NRM Liberation Day at the Kololo Ceremonial Grounds, Mr Museveni, who came to power on January 26, 1986, following a five-year armed struggle, spoke about his four-decade leadership and his seven consecutive election victories and shed light on what he said are misconceptions regarding his government’s achievements over the years.
‘You have been hearing people saying that NRM has done nothing. Today, there is a paper called [Daily] Monitor, which had a headline that said ‘No change in 40 years’.’ Now I will show you here [what NRM has achieved]. The economy of Uganda has recovered and gone through five phases…’ he said. The Monday Monitor’s headline, ’40 years of no change,’ aimed to highlight Museveni’s continuous reign as the only president in a country that has known no other leader since 1986 but him. Mr Museveni talked of ‘minimum economic recovery’ and explained that ‘the economy had gone down, then NRM revived it.
Then expansion of the small colonial economy, which we had because [President] Idi Amin had killed it, so we brought it back and expanded it. Then we diversified the economy, and then added value to the raw material, and finally we are in the knowledge economy, like automobiles, and these are the five phases we handled the economy.’ Uganda’s economy has transformed from $3.9 billion (Shs13.6 trillion) in 1986 to the current $66.9 billion (Shs234.1 trillion) in size using the Forex method and $188 billion (Shs657.8 trillion) using the Purchasing Power Parity value method as of June last year.
Qualitative leap forward
Mr Museveni has on several occasions emphasised that the next phase is a ‘qualitative leap forward’ to transform the economy into a $500 billion high-middle-income economy by adding value to raw materials and promoting modern industrialisation. ‘The economy of Uganda, we are lucky. We have four sectors, like commercial agriculture: sugarcane, tea, palm oil, banana, and coffee, among others. The second sector is manufacturing, where we have constructed various industrial parks.that is why somebody told me that if you go to supermarkets, 65 per cent of the products sold there are made in Uganda.
The third sector is tourism: hotels, transport, tourism, real estate, entertainment, creative art, musicians, and so on, all of which are in the service sector,’ he said. He chest-thumped on the tremendous progress registered in the automobile sector, where buses manufactured by Kira Motors can move long distances and return safely and strong. ‘This is development, and we are going to develop more. This year, your oil will start flowing. The people who don’t care about Africa wanted to come and grab this oil.
The economy is moving very fast. We are growing at 7-percent now, with the oil, we are going to go to double digits,’ he said. President Museveni, in October last year, outlined eight key sectors where Uganda’s oil, which is expected to start flowing between mid-this year and early 2027, shall be invested to ensure continuity of the country’s stability and development. He noted that the first sector would be defence to strengthen the country’s security systems, roads and railways to ease transport, education to maximise literacy, and the health sector to improve people’s health.
Uganda’s oil, whose development has attracted both internal and external opposition, especially from environmental activists, is expected to reach peak production and bring in $2b (Shs6.8 trillion) annually in the next five years and, long term, increase the country’s GDP by around $8.6 billion (Shs29.5 trillion). This money, Mr Museveni believes, is enough to change Uganda’s fortune since the investment will increase the key sector funding, which shall facilitate the creation of more jobs to reduce unemployment in Uganda. He added that the oil money will also ease the management of the swelling public debt, whose interest alone is Shs11 trillion.
Poverty reduction
Elevation of the majority Ugandan households from subsistence to a money economy is another achievement Mr Museveni cited yesterday, even as he admitted that a few households are still poor. Among the many poverty alleviation programmes his government has initiated in the last 40 years, Mr Museveni praised the Parish Development Programme (PDM), which he said had brought smiles to countless families, some of which he personally saw during his campaigns. ‘During Independence, only nine percent were in the money economy. From the colonial times, we had a small group of people in the money economy.. And when we came after stabilising the country and when we checked, we found that still a small number was in money economy.
That’s is why we started all these programmes like Entandikwa, Naads, and other, where we would give soft loans and grants but when I checked in 2013, 32 percent of homes were in money economy while the rest were in subsistence and that is when we involved the army, which went around giving seedlings and when we checked in 2019, 61 percent were in money economy,’ he explained. The President said the PDM was among the measures he applied to ensure all Ugandans benefit. ‘In some places, the PDM money has been grabbed by three people: the focal person, parish chief, and the puppet chairman.
That is not how the PDM is supposed to be. It requires the general meeting of the entire parish that wants to eliminate poverty and elect their own committee, which shall select who benefits.,’ he said. Launched on February 27, 2022, by President Museveni in the poverty-stricken Bukedi Sub-region, the PDM is the latest government poverty alleviation programme that seeks to transform 39 percent of Ugandan subsistence households into a money economy, enhance their overall quality of life, alleviate poverty, and reduce vulnerability across the country. The government, through this programme, sought to organise the lowest administrative and operational hub for delivering services closer to the people and thereby fostering local economic development.
This, officials envisaged, could accelerate the implementation of Area-Based Commodity Development (ABCD) planning, which is vital for realising the quantity and quality of agricultural production required for agro-industrialisation and export development. The programme has seven pillars, including production, storage, processing, and marketing; infrastructure and economic services; financial inclusion; social services; mindset change; parish-based management information system and governance and administration, whose implementation would make the programme a success.
Beneficiaries, the majority being the poor, engaged in subsistence agriculture, including persons with disabilities (PWDs), youth, and the elderly, and other vulnerable poor, form different savings and credit cooperatives (Saccos) in which the government pumps in Shs100 million every financial year, and is lent to beneficiaries at a one per cent interest rate. A flat amount of Shs1 million is lent to the beneficiary, who in turn invests it in their ventures and starts paying back after three years, and it becomes a revolving fund. Managed at the parish level, the funds are allocated as follows, where the women get 30 per cent, youths (30 per cent), PWDs (10 per cent), the elderly (10 percent), and the rest of the categories share 20 per cent.
With the appointment of Chief Justice Flavian Zeija, Mr Museveni promised a corruption-free Judiciary that would deliver justice. He also emphasised the creation of jobs. The President last year told his NRM supporters that he is not poor and thus implored all of them to work and be rich like him.
‘If the homes don’t have wealth, how will the economy grow? We need roads, but what will families put on the roads? Those roads are built with borrowed money, but the families, companies, and individuals are not producing wealth; this is what we don’t agree with.The ghetto kids have been in poverty despite development being all over them; that’s why we must stop this diversion,’ he said.
Unemployment in Uganda has been on the rise, and the latest National Population Housing and Census (NHPC) report of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) released in December last year indicated that about 700,000 unemployed Ugandans who are in the working age population spend more than a year looking for work or trying to start a business. The study showed that only 9.4 million out of the 25.1 million Ugandans who are in the 14-64 years age group working population are employed. The President spoke about his recent victory, where he garnered almost eight million votes, and added that if all the 10 million NRM supporters who snubbed the polls turned up, the Opposition would be no more.