President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has revealed that Uganda is fast approaching its target of attaining middle income status. Currently, Uganda’ per capita Gross domestic product (GDP) stands at $908. In a few years the president said the country will attain middle income status.
A couple of years ago, the government of Uganda undertook a plan to propel the country into middle income status by 2020. By 2020, the country failed to attain the middle status income though most of its fiscal policy were greatly hinged to capital development.
The World Bank classifies countries with the Middle Income Status as those whose citizen’s average income is between USD 1,000 to 12,000. Based on the formula of how Middle Income Countries are determined, close to half of all African countries are in the middle income range.
“If it had not been for the corona virus that disturbed the last quarter of the last financial year, we would have been even nearer.” He said
He congratulated the president of Tanzania, President Magufuli and his successors for achieving the Middle Income status. In June, the World Bank declared Tanzania a middle income country after its per capita increased from $1,020 in 2018 to $1,080 in 2019, which exceeds the 2019 threshold of $1,036 for lower-middle income status.
“We are intensifying the fight against poverty by encouraging wealth creation.” He said adding that since 1986, Uganda has not only achieved the minimum economic recovery but has also expanded 23 times in size from US$1.55billion to US$37.3billion in the last 34 years.
He said the government is aiming at expanding and deepening industrialization by producing the full range of primary and secondary industrial products that are economically viable, such as starch, cooking gas and industrial alcohol out of maize or industrial sugar out of chai sugar.
