As the countdown to 2025 when the first oil is expected continues, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has explained how money from the natural resource will be used.
Museveni and his government project annual earnings from oil at $2bn (about Shs7.4tn). Museveni will be in power for four decades by the end of the current five-year term. He has previously referred to the country’s oil as “my oil.”
“We just discovered the oil in western Uganda which we believe will help us a great deal, and now that is why you see those people coming up to contest against me. They are targeting my oil,” Museveni said in Masaka in 2015.
Museveni says that for as long as his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) is still in power, oil money will not go to consumptive expenditure and debt repayment.The finance ministry has put Uganda’s debt burden at Shs93.38tn – including Shs55.37tn external debt – as at December 2023.
“In a short-while to come, our petroleum will start coming from the ground. This will enable the Government to earn an extra USD 2billion, assuming today’s prices. This is apart from other income streams to the country,” said Museveni in his post-budget reading remarks on June 13.
“This oil money will never be used for consumption. It will only be used for infrastructure and science development. Therefore, strategic items like the railway and the irrigation will be funded by us directly.”
“Oil money will never be used for consumption, as long as the NRM government is in charge. It will only be used for infrastructure and science development. They will be funded by us through the oil money, we shall not borrow. We shall not use the money to import those taka taka (sic) like perfumes and whiskey.”
In addition to the oil sector, tourism, mechanised agriculture and minerals development were highlighted as key drivers to catapult the size of the economy to US$500 billion in the next one and a half decades.
“We are lucky we have the rains but sometimes we get less rains and get into food crisis. We must have complementary agricultural arrangements, such that when rains do not come, there is a standby irrigation system,” the President said.
Speaker Among on her part urged members to avoid any inducements and called on accounting officers to report cases of extortion.
“We have urged accounting officers to share with the leadership of the legislature any incidences of influence peddling. However, we have not received any such information. We urge accounting officers to maintain open channels of communication with the leadership of the legislature in pursuit of greater transparency and accountability,” Among said.
She called on legislators to walk in accordance with the code of conduct prescribed for them and uphold integrity of the rule of law.
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