The 2016/2017 annual budget of the cash-strapped EAC will be tabled here on Thursday before the regional Assembly which starts its budget session here today. Mr Mfumukeko warned when the baton was handed over to him by Dr Richard Sezibera, a Rwanda national, of impending stringent measures to salvage the regional organization from the current financial crisis. He stated that EAC, now made of six member states after the recent admission of South Sudan, has never experienced such financial instability and that he as a chief executive of the regional body would propose stern measures geared at cost-cutting and accountability on the part of its officials. During the current 2015/2016 financial year which is coming to an end, the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) approved a budget of $ 110,660,098 but by last month the Arusha-based Secretariat complained that the development partners, who contribute 70 per cent of the budget, had not disbursed about 30 per cent fo the expected funds. During the fiscal year coming to an end, EAC was compelled to phase out some projects funded by development partners due to declining support from donors. The $ 110.6m that was approved for expenditure was $14 million less than the 2014/2015 financial year budget which totalled $124 million. The next financial year budget will be read by Tanzania’s minister for Foreign Affairs, International and EAC Affairs Dr. Augustine Mahiga, in his capacity as the Chairperson of the EAC Council of Ministers, the policy organ of the Community. The unprecedented...

Prices of manufactured goods in the country went up by 6.5 per cent over the last one year from March 2015 to March 2016 due to increased cost of production. Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) said there was a general increase in prices for all the industry groups. Presenting the findings on the Producer Price Index (PPI) for manufactured goods on Wednesday in Kampala, principal statistician, business and industry statistics William Anguyo, said processed food increased by 9.7 per cent. “This was driven by a rise in prices of sugar which went up by 20.9 per cent as result of increased cost of production attributed to cost of raw materials, and processed coffee increased by 6.8 per cent due to the rise in prices on international market.” Mr Anguyo added: “Processed tea went up by 8.7 per cent mainly due to a price rise in international market, and processed fish went up by 16 per cent.” The other manufactured goods which registered increase in prices were malt liquor whose prices went up by 7 per cent, soft drinks by 7.4 per cent, structural metals by 3.56 per cent, basic iron and steel by 7.1 per cent and cement by 6 per cent. The PPI for manufacturing is an index that measures change in the prices of goods and services either as they leave their place of production or as they enter the production process. At the same meeting Ubos also released the PPI for hotels and restaurants, which measures the...

A section of trade analysts, civil society organisations and activists believe that Uganda has the potential to trade itself out of poverty. But that can only happen if it jealously guards itself against the system of free trade, a sugarcoated concept the country has blindly embraced. Trade and treaty analysts such as Nathan Irumba and Jane Nalunga, activist intellectuals such as Yash Tandon and political economist Julius Kiiza say developing countries such as Uganda cannot compete fairly in global trade because of how it has been structured and guarded. And for that, “Uganda should approach trade issues as war for Western countries are already doing that and to good effect,” Prof Yash Tandon told Daily Monitor in Kampala last week ahead of the launch of his book ‘Trade is War’. He added: “We (Uganda) are under a system of free trade which is a fiction. For a country like Uganda that has nothing to offer yet, it should not be part of that. “There is another misconception about fair trade, yet in reality it is war that is being fought against African countries for centuries.” The professor reckons that the trade war can only be fought with proper strategies. Among the strategies, he suggests resisting exploitation and disassociation from globalised systems of trade. He was also of the view that developing countries such as Uganda should begin to add value to their produce instead of trading raw materials, get rid of barriers to trade, and generally put her own house...

Uganda has played down any suggestions that the Kenyan government plans to construct its route of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) that will be terminated at Kisumu, which is about 139 kilometres from the Kenya-Uganda border town of Malaba. According to The East African newspaper, Kenya’s transport cabinet secretary James Macharia acknowledged that extension of the line to Malaba may no longer be necessary if landlocked states opted out. “The decision has not been reached but we have a number of options at our disposal. We can decide to end the SGR at Naivasha or Kisumu but it will still be a viable venture due to the presence of Lake Victoria,” said Mr Macharia. The SGR Uganda project coordinator, Mr Kasingye Kyamugambi has refuted the claims and said the three countries – Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda – were still committed to the route. “I think the protocol is clear between the countries and anything that’s outside the protocol must also come through the Northern Corridor Integration Project (NCIP) summit that we use as a fall back arm to know if we are together or not and that is really the presidents’ forum,” he told Daily Monitor during a tour to assess land acquisition in Tororo District on Wednesday. The ping-pong Rwanda last week, announced plans to build a railway through Tanzania to the Indian Ocean noting that the route is cheaper and would take a shorter time to complete. This is according to The East African. The Northern Corridor Infrastructure...

Uganda Export Promotion Board (UEPB), a government agency tasked with promoting and marketing the country’s exports, will in the next five years concentrate on marketing Uganda’s exports in the region. According to the executive director of the board, Mr Elly Twineyo Kamugisha, the consumption of Uganda’s exports in the East Africa region far exceeds the ones shipped beyond the regional borders. Speaking at a media networking meeting in Kampala yesterday, Mr Kamugisha said statistics support the need to focus the country’s exports in the regional countries and Africa. He believes this can be realised through trading with regional partners in East African Community and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) countries. “Regional markets are getting bigger by the day,” said Mr Kamugisha. He continued: “Before, European markets used to be the biggest but we are seeing a shift in that. There is now over $1b (Shs3.3 trillion) export market in the region and it is easy to promote our products within the region because we have similar lifestyles.” According to UEPB data, Uganda’s total merchandise exports in 2014 was $2.6b (Shs8.7 trillion) and by close of last year, it had hit $2.7b (Shs9 trillion). Statistics futher indicated that last year, the regional market is Uganda’s top export destination, with $1b worth of exports shipped from Uganda to the neighbouring countries. This means that 54 per cent of Uganda’s exports are consumed regionally. The European Union comes second, consuming $502m (Shs1.74 trillion) worth of the country’s exports. Explaining the...

KAMPALA. Local manufacturers want government to do more in encouraging Ugandans to consume locally made products, saying that would help them become more competitive, employ more Ugandans and generate revenue to the national coffers. The producers also want government agencies to give them priority before procuring products from elsewhere; especially to those whose products have been certified by the standard body in the country. Talking to Daily Monitor last week before launching their new multipurpose antiseptics and disinfectant solutions, Mr Akshay Agarwal, the managing director of Kwality Afro Asia Limited, said: “We have the best locally made products on the market but for us to employ more people, we would want the home population to consume our products.” He continued: “We are hoping that government will influence that decision by encouraging the people to buy products made here. “At the same time, we would want the population to have confidence in our products because they are of the highest quality even better than the imported stuff.” According to Mr Arkshay, local manufacturers always put into perspective the affordability of the products and package for different local markets without compromising the standard and inflating the price. In an earlier interview, Mr Ssebagala Kigozi, the executive director of Uganda Manufacturers Association (UMA), said the country’s currency volatility is largely as a result of being a net importer. To deal with that, he said Ugandans should rise above the mentality that imported goods are superior to locally manufactured ones. He said once Ugandans...

Kampala. The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) is set to unveil strategies of creating 25 million jobs for young people over the 10 years in its member states. The strategies are contained in the group’s new agenda for the continent’s economic transformation that are to be revealed at this year’s annual meetings scheduled to take place from May 23 to 27 in Lusaka, Zambia. Unemployment in sub Saharan/African continent as a whole has an estimated 11 million young Africans expected to join the labour market every year for the next decade (World Bank data). Therefore, creating millions of productive, well-paying jobs will be vital to boost economic growth to significantly cut poverty, and create shared prosperity in Africa. In an annual meetings preview video message, the president AfDB, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, said participants will examine burning issues in Africa and focus on the bank’s five new priority areas, (High 5s), designed to scale up its operations for the continent’s transformation. These High 5s are: Light up and power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialise Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. “Each of those is high on the agenda in Lusaka,” Dr Adesina said, noting that three of them will take a major leap forward as the bank unveils new strategies, and a programme to create 25 million jobs for young people over the next decade. “All of them need to be debated and owned, as much by governments, as by business, as by civil...

Rwanda has denied that it had dropped plans to build a new railway connecting Kigali to Mombasa in favour of the Tanzania route. Rwandan Minister for Finance and Economic Planning Claver Gatete was last week quoted saying that Kigali will opt for a Tanzanian route because it will be shorter and cheaper. This prompted unease especially at a time when Uganda has opted to build a pipeline for its oil through Tanzania rather than Kenya. The executive director of Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA) Donat Bagula said the Rwandan minister had been misquoted by a section of the media. “Rwanda has not pulled out of the Northern Corridor and this has been clarified in the local media following the misquoting of the minister,” said an NCTTCA communications office in a statement in response to questions asked by the Business Daily. According to The New Times, a Rwandan publication, the country is still on course to linking their railway to Mombasa. “Rwanda is not pulling out of the Kenyan railway route. What I pointed out was that the Tanzanian route is shorter and slightly cheaper compared to the Kenyan one. “To suggest that Rwanda was pulling out of one railway route in favour of the other is simply misleading,” Gatete told The New Times last week. Rwanda estimates that building the railway line along the Northern Corridor to link Mombasa will cost $ 1 billion and $800-900 million on Tanzanian route. Rwanda and other countries along the corridor...

The Kenya government has said it will directly award 17 newly demarcated blocks for the exploration of crude oil and natural gas to international prospecting companies. The Ministry of Energy said it will use a first-come, first-served basis to negotiate the production sharing agreements (PSAs) for exploration before going into competitive bidding in 2017. Uganda is expected to award the licences of six exploration blocks in the Albertine basin by the end of next month. Kenya’s Petroleum Principal Secretary Andrew Kamau said 17 new blocks have been demarcated in order to reduce acreage and accelerate the pace of seismic surveys in identifying oil and gas deposits. “Sessional Paper No 4 of 2005 on energy provides for the reduction of block sizes to curb the tendency by companies to hoard them while carrying out work on very small parts of entire acreage,” he said. Revision of blocks The first blocks were deemed too large, covering about 20,000 square kilometres. The first revision was done in 2006, when the blocks were increased from 25 to 37. The second revision was in 2013, and the number of blocks went up to 46. Mr Kamau said the PSAs for the new blocks will be signed after exploration terms are negotiated and new acreage is delineated by the Survey Department subdividing existing blocks or merging areas that have been surrendered. “Firms can retain the portion of the block deemed valuable, and surrender 25 per cent of the original contract area at or before the end of...

The drop in global prices for Rwanda’s principal minerals — tin, coltan and wolfram — has left some 37,800 miners facing joblessness as companies suspend operations. The government is now looking into exploring for other minerals, such as gold and gemstones, as well as ensuring that minerals are smelted and processed before exportation in order to add value to the product. “One way we can help the artisanal miners is by finding ways to add value to the minerals and exploiting more mineral types,” Evode Imena, the Minister of State for Mining, said. “Miners earned approximately $10 for every kilogramme of tin, but the price has dropped to half of that in three years. We will build a sector that is more resilient to external shocks, by not just relying on extracts.” The income of artisanal miners has dropped by more than 20 per cent in the past three years. Many have returned to subsistence farming. Patrick Bayisenge, 37, a miner at the new Bugarama mining site in Northern Province, said mining is not as lucrative as it used to be, and only earns him about half of what he used to make three years ago. “Many others have deserted the mines. They say they have never experienced this situation before. I am holding on because I need to do what I can to take care of my family,” said the father of three. The mining companies are also being shunned by banks and other financiers who are reluctant to...