KAMPALA – David Bahati, the Minister of State for Planning at the Ministry of Finance has assured Ugandans that they will be able to attain Middle Income Status by the end of 2020.
The Minister made the remarks on Tuesday, January 21 while appearing before Parliament’s Budget Committee to present the 2020/2021 national budget framework paper.
During the meeting, a section of MPs including Amos Lugoloobi (Ntenjeru County) and Muwanga Kivumbi (Butambala County) tasked the Minister to explain how far Government has gone with delivering its promise of delivering middle income to Ugandans by 2020.
Muwanga asked, “This is the 4th year of ‘kisanja hakuna mchezo’ are you talking about a government which has failed? You made a promise to people is middle-income status, how far have you moved with this journey in real figures?
The Minister responded saying, “We are making massive progress we hope and believe we would have attained middle income by end of this year. So far, we are at USD878 per capita and middle-income status requires USD1039 per capita income, so we think we get the reviews, we would have hit it by the end of this year.”
The total resource envelope for 2019/2020 projected to be Shs39.640Trn down from Shs40.467Trn for 2019/2020 with the reduction blamed on reduction in external financing.
According to the breakdown, the Ministry of Works, Interest Payments and Education, and Security Sectors will be the highest earners while Trade, Science and Technology, and ICT sectors will receive the least funding.
The Minister said that in the 2020/2021 budget, priority will be put on increasing production and productivity in the productive sectors of the economy, enhancing private sector competitiveness, consolidating and increasing infrastructure stock, increase social service provision, improving the effectiveness of governance as well as maintaining peace and security.
