By Peter Ssebulime
Following the recently unveiled Budget Strategy FY 2018/2019 under the theme “Industrialization for job creation and shared prosperity” at the National Budget Consultative Conference, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have warned that the 0.5 percent of the 2018/19 budget allocation of Trade, Tourism, Industry and Cooperatives sector won’t deliver on industrialization for job creation and shared prosperity.
The SEATINE Country Director Jane Nalugya while presenting the CSO statement, informed the media that the budget is not sufficient to support the sector to achieve the budget theme and doesn’t reflect the vision 2040 goal of ensuring manufactured exports will constitute 50% of the country’s total exports.
SEATINE Country Director Jane Nalugya
The drafted national budget for the financial year 2018/19 indicates that the Ministry of Trade, Tourism, Industry and Cooperatives was allocated with 29.274 trillion shillings under the theme: “industrialization for job creation and shared prosperity.”
“We need to inject some medicine in our economic development where by promoting the expansion of local products so that we benefit from (BUBU) Buy Uganda Build Uganda because much as the government emphasizes on it, it has not supported it instead all products like furniture for government offices are imported from abroad and local investors end up making losses” she narrated
However, she calls on government to re-emphasize more resources to the sector in order to establish backward and forward linkages between manufacturing and agriculture, creating employment, advanced technology and stimulate agricultural production among others.