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.”
Experts have warned that most of the budget the next financial year beginning on July 01 is “not ours.” (Read Details Here).
