president's speech during the launch of vision 2040.doc
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PRESIDENT'S SPEECH DURING THE LAUNCH OF VISION 2040TRANSCRIPT
Speech on:
Uganda’s Vision to Transform froma Predominantly Peasant Society into a Competitive
Upper Middle Income Country by 2040
By
H.E. Yoweri Kaguta MuseveniPresident of the Republic of Uganda
At the Launch of Uganda Vision 2040
Kololo Independence Grounds - 18th April, 2013
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His Excellency, the Vice President,
The Honourable Speaker of Parliament,
The Honourable Chief Justice,
The Right Honourable Prime Minister,
Honourable Ministers,
Honourable Leader of the Opposition,
Honourable Members of Parliament,
Head of Public Service,
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors and High
Commissioners,
Religious and Cultural Leaders,
Dr. Kisamba Mugerwa & Staff of National Planning
Authority;
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.
Our Banyankore people say: “Otoomize tahwa
ikaranga.” This translates that “if your millet takes
long to dry, you continue roasting it until it dries.”
Our Baganda people say: “Addingana amawolu
y’aggagyamu omukkuto” translates as “a person
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who eats cold meals of the previous night
repeatedly, eventually gets satisfied”.
The NRM, right from the bush days, was clear on the
issue of socio-economic transformation. Point
Number 5 of the NRM Ten-Points Programme said as
follows: “Building an independent, integrated
and self-sustaining national economy”. This
meant that agriculture, mines, forests and lakes
would produce raw materials which industry
(factories) would turn into finished products so that
we would end the phenomenon of Uganda exporting
raw materials where we lose both money and jobs.
I have always given you the example of coffee.
Throughout the last century until today, Uganda has
been exporting bean-coffee (empeke). As a reward
for that effort, Uganda gets one American dollar per
kilogram. Last year, we got US$ 3 per kilogram
because the coffee prices were high globally. When
Nestle roasts and grinds the same coffee in London,
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they get US$ 15. If you assume that US$ 0.20 per
kilogram is for transport, the rest of the US$ 15 is
money Uganda should get. Therefore, Uganda
donates to the U.K. US$ 11.80 in every kilogram of
coffee we sell (although the US$ 11.80 per kg includes
processing and handling costs in London, it is still money
donated to them). This story of coffee is repeated for
other products such as cotton, maize, cattle, goats,
minerals, bananas, etc.
The GDP of Uganda will soon be US$ 25 billion. That
is the same size as the GDP of Nigeria in the year
1992 or twice the size of the GDP of Kenya in the
year 2006/07. It is quite a long journey from 1986
when the GDP of Uganda was US$ 1.5 billion. By
adding value to the raw materials we are exporting
now and what is consumed raw now, even at the
level of today’s production, the size of Uganda’s GDP
could grow to US$ 300 billion, bigger than the size of
Singapore’s GDP of US$ 276 billion in 2012. This size
of economy would create more jobs, provide more
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products and generate more taxes. Therefore, the
NRM’s instructions to the Government system in
1986 was clear – plan for the transformation of
Uganda’s economy into an integrated,
independent and self-sustaining one.
It took a bit of time for me to realize that the
Government system (some of the political class and
the bureaucrats) did not know how to do this. In any
case, some time was needed to deal with the
informalization of the economy that had set in
between 1971 and 1986 by stopping the currency
speculation (the foreign currency black market –
kibanda), the smuggling (magendo), the speculation
in goods (kusamula), etc. These re-formalization and
stabilization measures were achieved quickly
enough. Thereafter, the achieving of our Vision
needed further clarification for the Government
system.
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Some of the political actors, acting out of lack of
exposure, did real damage to the economy by, for
instance, stopping the Bujagaali hydro-power project
in the year 2001.
After some reflections, I discovered where the
problem was in terms of charting the way forward
not only for Uganda but for most of Africa. I realized
that we could not achieve our goal of building an
independent, integrated, self-sustaining national
economy if we did not deal with these strategic
bottlenecks that I have repeatedly told the country
about. These are:
1. Ideological disorientation typified by political actors
in Africa taking sectarian positions – religious, ethnic,
gender, etc.
2. Inability to restructure the colonial state;
3. Stifling of the Private Sector;
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4. Undeveloped human resource, which were not skilled
and were not healthy. Such populations could not
power socio-economic transformation;
5. Inadequate infrastructure that causes the costs of
doing business in the economy to go up, thereby
rendering our products uncompetitive and
undermining the profitability of investments by
having the said high costs;
6. Small internal markets in the respective countries on
account of the colonial balkanization.
7. Lack of industrialization and exporting raw materials
instead of exporting finished products.
8. Undeveloped services’ sector.
9. Under-developed agriculture.
10. Lack of democracy.
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We had to distil these for the Government system. It
was not enough to assume that the Government
system would know what to do by themselves. Why
have all the others in Africa not known this all these
50 years since independence? Even in some of the
countries that have been peaceful all the time since
independence, these strategic bottlenecks have not
been clear. It is no accident that it is only in South
Africa and Gaddafi’s Libya that we have had a kWh
per capita of 4,270 and 4,803, respectively.
Uganda’s kWh per capita in 1986, was 30. It is now
150 kWh. As I have told you repeatedly, the kWh per
capita of the USA is 12,400.
I am, therefore, most pleased today because, finally,
one Agency of the Government, the National
Planning Authority (NPA), has evolved a position that
is fully in harmony with our Vision if they
incorporated the amendments I forwarded to them. I
have not read the final version of their write up. I
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read the draft version to which I added what they
had either not included or what they needed to
clarify further.
The Vision says that in order for Uganda to become
an upper middle income country by 2040, we need to
generate 42,000 MW of electricity from all the hydro
sources, the petroleum and gas sources, the geo-
thermal (ebitagata) sources and the nuclear sources
using our abundant uranium. We need to revamp
and up-grade the railway system to standard gauge;
bituminize much of the road network; utilize the
water transport system; develop our oil and gas
resources; implement the flagship projects of the
phosphates in Tororo, the iron-ore project in Muko;
etc; not only continue to educate enmasse all our
human resource but skill them also; modernise
agriculture through the use of fertilizers and
irrigation; and modernize the services’ sector e.g.
banking, hotels, tourism, insurance, etc. In other
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words, the NPA is, finally, talking about the strategic
bottlenecks and talking the language of Point No. 5
of the NRM’s Ten-Points Programme.
In the last 27 years, the NRM has worked for solving
the strategic bottlenecks or addressing them in part.
We have addressed the issue of markets by working
with our partners in East Africa and COMESA regions.
We have also worked with the USA, EU, India and
Japan on the issue of market access, tariff-free and
quota-free. We have sent all Ugandans to school
through UPE and USE even when we did not have
enough resources yet. We have started addressing
the question of power (electricity), the roads and the
railway by converting our Engineering Brigade of the
Army into a railway building force, among its other
tasks. This is on top of ensuring security in the whole
country and democratising the country.
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We are now set to move. Let all budgeting reflect
the gains of this plan. We need US$ 200 billion to
implement this plan. With our oil, this will not be a
problem. Even without oil, but with discipline, we
would have raised the money to implement this plan.
Using our own money, apart from the usual tasks of
paying salaries, supporting defence, etc., we have
been able to fund the reconstruction of Masaka-
Kampala road, Kampala-Mityana road, Jinja-Kamuli
road, the rehabilitation of Kawempe-Kafu road,
Tororo-Soroti road, etc. We are now building Moroto-
Nakapiripirit road, Mbarara-Kikagate road, Ishaka-
Kagamba road and we have already finished
Matugga-Semuto-Kapeeka road. The Banyankore
say: “Entandikiriro y’oruhara n’ebyeyera” (balding
starts with a high hair line).
There is one tactical bottleneck, which must be dealt
with. This is the issue of hostility to the Private
Sector by elements of the political class and the
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bureaucrats. Much of the wealth is created by the
Private Sector (shops, hotels, farms, factories, mines,
etc.). When I addressed Parliament sometime ago, I
told you that there were two modern kings: the
consumer and the entrepreneur. The consumer
provides the market of what we produce. If there are
no consumers to buy what we produce, our
businesses cannot survive. On the other hand, the
entrepreneur encapsulates three elements:
entrepreneurial ‘eyes’ to see opportunity where
others have not done so, knowledge on how to
exploit that opportunity and savings to use in
exploiting that opportunity. Are such people
abundant in Uganda? If they are, why has Uganda,
indeed, why has the whole of Africa, not developed
all this time to become first World Countries? It is,
therefore, criminal for anybody to mishandle
entrepreneurs – either internal or external. It is a
betrayal for the country. Whose interests are we
working for if we do not nurture and support the
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efforts of entrepreneurs? When an entrepreneur
executes a project, he helps us to address the issue
of jobs, products of goods and services, foreign
exchange inflows or import-savings, tax generation
for the State and, therefore, increases Government’s
ability to pay salaries, provide health care, build
roads, build schools, etc. It is, therefore, criminal to
delay an entrepreneur or to ask for bribes from an
entrepreneur. All projects must be implemented
promptly.
The only aspects to be considered should be: the
ability of the entrepreneur to implement the project,
if there is any damage to the environment and if the
products are safe for the consumers. The last aspect
is the work of Uganda National Bureau of Standards
(UNBS). None of these should delay a project even
for a week because those products are well known
and there are standard ways of assessing them. How
much effluent does a milk factory of this capacity
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produce? How is it handled elsewhere? Why should,
then, a project be delayed? The hostility to the
Private Sector by both the political and the
bureaucratic classes is not new. Even in the past,
there were bouts of those mistakes culminating in
Amin’s economic war against the Asian Ugandans. In
reality it should be better called Amin’s economic
disaster.
Uganda will become a lower middle-income Country
by 2017 and an upper middle-income Country by
2032. We are, finally, harmonized with the National
Planning Authority. Let all elements of the political
class and the bureaucratic class be similarly aligned.
Uganda is unstoppable.
It is now my pleasure to launch the 2040 Vision.
I thank you.
18th April 2013 - Kololo Airstrip, Kampala
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