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Finance minister Matia Kasaija, while delivering the 2017/18 budget speech in Kampala, says efforts are being made to increase the per capita income from the current 773 dollars to 1,039 dollars, the threshold for lower middle income status.
The Uganda government insists the country will achieve lower middle income status by 2020.
The Minister of Finance, Matia Kasaija, while delivering the 2017/18 budget speech in Kampala, says efforts are being made to increase the per capita income from the current 773 dollars to 1,039 dollars, the threshold for lower middle income status.
Minister Kasaija says the economy also has to grow by at least 17 billion shillings in order for Uganda to reach the middle income bracket.
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The size of Uganda's economy is 25.7 billion dollars, meaning the economy has to grow by more than half the current size for the country to become a lower middle income country.
Minister Kasaija says in order to become a lower middle income country, the government is focusing on seven priority areas.
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The minister says in order to attain lower middle income status, it cannot be business as usual, and emphasizing that corruption will have to be stumped out.
Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund say that for Uganda to become a lower middle income country, Uganda's economy has to grow at over 12 percent per annum at least for a decade.
The economy has been growing at less than five percent for the last two years, with this year's projection at 3.5 percent.
In East Africa, it is only Kenya with the per capita income that qualifies it as a lower middle income country, with Rwanda and Tanzania coming closer in second and third positions respectively.
