The East African region’s competitiveness can only be boosted if more investments are made in infrastructure, healthcare and education, a competitiveness report has shown. The 2015/2016 Africa Competitiveness Report shows that East Africa is the continent’s most competitive region with Rwanda being the most competitive economy in the region followed by Kenya. Overall, Rwanda is in third position in Africa after Mauritius and South Africa and 58th globally. The report findings indicate that East Africa’s favourable ranking largely owes to the diversity of its economies and business efficiency. However, the report findings indicate that a lot is desired in basic aspects such as infrastructure within and connecting the region outwards as well as healthcare and education. Improvements in education and healthcare will serve to improve human capital and market size, the report notes. “Although currently Africa’s fastest growing region, the EAC faces competitiveness challenges including infrastructure, human capital, technological readiness and market size. Life expectancy remains low and infant mortality high. Despite recent progress, secondary and tertiary enrolment rates remain low at 38 per cent and 4.5 per cent respectively which is lower than Ecowas and SADC,” the report reads in part. The report also takes into consideration the disparities within EAC member states, which cause some countries to bring down the overall performance of the region. “The greatest disparities in the EAC region are in the areas of institutions and financial markets development. Rwanda leads in institutions, infrastructure, health and primary education and market efficiencies. Kenya leads in business...

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...

There was much excitement in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, in the week leading up to the convening of the World Economic Forum for Africa recently. As with past meetings of this magnitude, the government of Rwanda left nothing to chance. Its remarkable mobilisation capacity was deployed to get everyone with a role to play during the preparations to do their bit and do it well. Under normal circumstances officials and public servants here work like there is no tomorrow. It gets worse when big events that require special attention are in the offing. Contacts I was running after for bits of information about this and that and who from one to the next pleaded inability to see me, summed up what was going on. The most common response to appointment requests were, “I really can’t do anything this week.” A friend working for a major government agency wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was no use trying to set up a coffee appointment before the WEF was over, “because I am not able to think about anything else right now”. It mattered not whether I was talking to a public servant, a politician, or a member of the local business community. They were all “busy with WEF.” What on earth were they doing, I wondered. In public, there was not much activity in evidence. And there were no reports in the media about this or that critically important aspect of the preparations lagging hopelessly behind schedule. Everything seemed to be in...

Come July, exporters in East Africa will pay more, when a new requirement on weighing and verifying containers is implemented globally. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is making verification of weights a condition for loading packed export containers aboard ships to conform to amended changes to Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention. Safety is a driver of change as each year over 135 million containers enter the global supply chain, but many lack accurate weight estimates, contributing to costly shipping accidents. The Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA) said SOLAS changes aim to curb under-declaring weight of cargo that can lead to shipwrecks, destruction of goods and pollution if hazardous cargo spills into the sea. The global rule for shippers to provide verified gross mass (VGM) for every packed container complete with correct documentation targeting enhanced safety is expected to increase cost of operations with consumers bearing the brunt. A container without VGM will not be loaded on a ship from July 1. A shipper sending goods will be responsible for proper verified weighing of packed container and documentation for cargo to be loaded on a vessel. Any container exceeding maximum gross mass will not be loaded to a ship. KMA acting director-general Cosmas Cherop said a container leaving a port will have a document signed either electronically or in hard copy by the shipper on bill of lading. Shippers will make the information available in advance to the port and the shipping line. The first method of obtaining VGM entails...