The government of Uganda has said its focus now is now financially empowering citizens to have purchasing power after fully reopening the economy.
The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Mr Ramathan Ggoobi, said that during the lockdown, productivity went very low, with government only spending on service delivery and not production.
The PS also stressed that from a pre-pandemic level of 6.4 per cent in FY 2018/19, economic growth slowed to 3.0 per cent in FY2019/20.
“We faced a burden of insufficient demand arising from the low purchasing power in the economy due to loss of livelihoods,” Mr Ggoobi said during a talkshow on NBS TV on Monday, 14 February 2022
“We are glad that His Excellency the President has now fully reopened the economy and we are optimistic that livelihoods will be secured. The economy is expected to recover leading to the Socio-Economic transformation of our country,” he added.
Mr Ggoobi said the government has put in place strategies to enable the economy recover, leading to the socio-economic transformation of the country.
Mr Ggoobi, who is also the Secretary to the Treasury, says interventions such as Parish development model, Emyooga, Uganda Development Bank funding and small businesses recovery fund are all aimed at ensuring Ugandans access cheap credit and be productive.
“We have set up the Shs200 Billion Small Business Recovery Fund and the Parish Development Model, through its seven pillars including the Financial Inclusion pillar,” he said.
He added that his ministry has a key stake in the implementation of the 17 sustainable development goals, which include reducing poverty, hunger as well as improving indicators for health, education, water, industry and infrastructure among others.
“All interventions of Government of Uganda are now aligned to the NDP III with major goal of increasing household incomes and improved quality of life of Ugandans. Working with all sectors (MDAs) under programme approach to achieve our objectives,” he said.
