Uganda’s government has set an ambitious target to grow its economy to $500 billion within 15 years.
“I would like to see a Uganda with five hundred billion dollars; we are now at about $53 billion,” said Ramathan Ggoobi, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development who was the chief guest at the 10th annual Uganda National Journalism Awards ceremony held at Mestil Hotel in Kampala.
This vision is part of the government’s comprehensive strategy to transform Uganda’s economy.
To achieve this, the government is focusing on four key sectors: agro-industrialization, light manufacturing, tourism, and extractives. Agro-industrialization is a priority, with plans to raise its contribution to $20 billion by 2040.
“The target here is to raise it to twenty billion dollars by 2040,” Ggoobi explained. “This sector is one of our anchor sectors that is employing the bulk of Ugandans and quite a catalyst in nature.”
He emphasized the importance of investing in this sector to drive economic growth.
The country’s 10-fold growth strategy highlights the likely earnings from science, technology, innovation, and generally communication and technology.
Ggoobi said science, technology, and innovation have multiplier effects. “It is an anchor program which is going to create an economy-wide impact. We would want to see it promoted,” he said.
Ggoobi explained that the government now wants to do things differently to achieve good ambitions. “We want to take full advantage of the new way of doing things. We call it emerging technologies. We want to invest more in new sources of growth” among the actions to achieve the goals is the need to clean up by implementing the existing laws and regulations.
“In Uganda, we are behaving as if chaos is the new normal. The way we live, the way we drive on the road, the way we sell goods in the market, it is all chaos. We would want to clean up by enforcing rules of the game” As part of those efforts, the Ministry of Finance suggests the rollout of Indicative Planning Figures (IPFs) so that limited funds are efficiently utilized.
Tourism is another vital area, with a goal of generating $50 billion by 2040.
“We intend to maximize easy mobility of entry and exit from Uganda by airlines, including our own Uganda Airlines,” said Patrick Ocailap, Deputy Secretary to the Treasury.
The government plans to invest in infrastructure and facilitation to attract more tourists.
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