Uganda’s Economy Growing Steadily- Ggoobi

While appearing on NBS Morning Breeze, Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury, Ramathan Ggoobi said the size of Uganda’s economy has increased to about USD 70 billion, meaning that Uganda has to grow the economy about 7-fold compared to the earlier targeted 10-fold growth to achieve the goal of building a USD 500- billion- economy in the next 15 years.

Dr. Ggoobi said for the first time, there is policy consensus in the whole of Government and resultant alignment by the Private Sector, Financial Sector and Development Partners. He also noted that the entire government is also aligned in terms of planning as evidenced by the fourth national development plan (NDP IV).

“Policy consensus is the first step and that is where we have been failing,” said Ggoobi, adding that the Asian Tigers were able to transform their economies because policy consensus.

Unlike other election years, the PSST said last year was a unique which was characterized by stable inflation, stable shilling, highest growth rates and growth in exports especially coffee.

He thanked Bank of Uganda for working closely with the Finance Ministry to harmonize the fiscal and monetary policy.

Ggoobi said the greatest risk to achieving the USD 500 billion economy as planned is the low mobilization of domestic revenue. He said this must be addressed urgently by fully implementing the revenue mobilization strategy.

He also highlighted challenges to do with the narrow tax base which leaves the tax burden to a few compliant taxpayers and informality which makes it hard to tax.

Going forward, Ggoobi said Government is making key reforms in procurement to eliminate corruption, improving implementation of projects, giving priority to concessional borrowing where necessary and investing deliberatively in value addition especially for coffee, minerals, fruits and vegetables as well as beef and dairy.