By Joseph Mawejje,  Research Analyst EPRC After the Minister of Finance read the national budget on June 12 th 2014, there has been a raging debate on how to finance Uganda’s UGX 11,088 billion proposed tax revenue.  Most of the protagonists have been against the reinstatement of VAT on agricultural services. Within this realm, the New Vision, July 30, 2014 carried an article describing how Coca Cola—a leading multinational producer of soft drinks—was negotiating a tax waiver in lieu for providing logistical support to transport medical equipment from the USA to Uganda. The equipment will be provided by Medsave—a USA based medical charity. Negotiations for Tax Waiver Specifically, Coca cola was requesting for exemption of excise duty on all soda products and reduction to 5% of the excise duty on mineral water.  In exchange, it was reported, the company would ship to Uganda “donated medical equipment worth US$20 million from the USA.” The arguments given by...

Pual Corti Lakuma is a Research Analyst at the the Economic Policy Research Centre Uganda's tea industry has been a subject of neglect by both the public and private sector. Despite the neglect, tea is Uganda?s third export by value. In 2012/13, Uganda earned US$ 72 Million from exporting 63,456 tonnes of tea. Tea exports accounted for 2.8 percent of total Uganda?s exports and 0.36 percent of 2012/13 Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Owing to its ability to generate exports revenue, tea is earmarked among the ten priority crops in the agricultural sector Development Strategy and Investment Plan (DSIP).  Therefore, tea is a viable tool for driving the vision 2040 agenda. In spites of its contribution to the economy, Uganda?s tea industry faces many structural challenges. For instance, it cannot compete favourably with other tea sectors such as the one in Kenya. In 2012/13 Kenya earned US$ 1.23 Billion from exporting 429, 000 metric tonnes. Kenya?s earnings represented 22 perc...

Uganda has recorded slow progress in ensuring that majority of Ugandan households have access to electricity. This has been partly due to the limited exploitation of renewable sources that can offer alternative sources of energy. In 2011, for example, renewable energy other than from hydro sources accounted for 12 percent of total electricity generation. Data from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics indicate that access to electricity by Ugandans has improved modestly from 9.5 per cent in 2002 to 14 per cent in 2013. Consequently current electricity access rates are some of the lowest in Sub Saharan Africa. There are also challenges of ensuring that majority of rural dwellers get access to electricity.    Unequal Distribution     Energy access is unequally distributed across the country and the provision of electricity has been limited to mainly urban and semi-urban areas. While 40 percent of urban households have access to electricity, progress in the rural are...

By Shifa Mwesigye Uganda’s Human Development Index (HDI) continues to fall despite registering growth in the last 20 years. Uganda is ranked 164 out of 187 of the assessed countries. In 1990, Uganda’s HDI stood at 0.306 and was comparable to Benin, Central Africa Republic, and Gambia. Today, Uganda has attained a 65% improvement and HDI stands at 0.484. While Uganda’s income growth due to investment in poverty alleviation has improved, poverty has also fallen from 56.4% in 1992 to 19.7% in 2013. Life expectancy and expected years of schooling have also improved. But Uganda continues to fall among the lowest 42 countries meaning that the country’s growth has does not reflect improvement in the livelihoods of its people. Uganda is ranked below its neighbours Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania and in fact the index is below the sub Saharan Africa average of 0.502. The HDI report released by United Nations Development Program (UNDP focused on Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulne...

SHIFA MWESIGYE Uganda’s Human Development Index (HDI) continues to fall in the low human development category despite improvement the last 20 years. Uganda is ranked 164 out of 187 countries which were measured according to the Human Development Index report of 2014.  This year, the report done by United Nations Development Program, focuses on Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience .   The HDI is a summary measure of long term progress in long and healthy life, access to knowledge and decent standard of living.  The report highlights that more than 200 million people worldwide are affected by natural disasters every year. More tha 2.2 billion people are living in poverty and 80% of the global population lacks comprehensive social protection. Some 842 million people continue to suffer from chronic hunger. Ahunna Eziakonwa-Onochie the UN Resident Coordinator says resilience shouldn’t be about capacity to endure suffe...

By Dr. Annettee Kuteesa, R esearch Fellow,  Economic Policy Research Centre Listening to President Museveni’s state-of-the-nation address a few weeks ago, it was no surprise that the agriculture, industry, services, and ICT sectors were the centre of his speech. These four dominate the economy. However, when it came to agriculture, you could sense the president’s disappointment with its performance. There was the inability of the peasants to tap into agriculture on the one hand, and Naads spending behaviour that has let down sector growth, on the other. His solution is to restructure the institution. While I agree with the president and laud him for the change long overdue, one must stand back and assess what type of restructuring Naads needs. The Impact of Naads on Agriculture Two years ago, the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) carried out a study on the impact of Naads on agriculture. The study discovered that there was very little impact of the programme on the ...

By Kasirye Ibrahim In one day, Nigeria’s GDP increased by 89% and leap frogged South Africa to become the continent’s largest economy. The Nigerian economy is now officially valued at 80.3trillion Naira   (US$ 510 billion) and the country has become 24 th largest economy in the world. The Nigerian government announced the re-valuation of the country gross domestic product (GDP) figures on April 7 th 2014. Based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Uganda’s GDP in 2013 was US$ 23 billion and this placed the country at 102 position in the global rankings. This revaluation means that the Nigerian economy is now more than 22 times larger than the Ugandan economy.   Although changes in the GDP base may directly increase other metrics used to capture income status such as GDP per capita, actual welfare status may not change much given the very large informal and non-monetary economy that is characteristic of African countries. Indeed, recent statistics show that the ...