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President Museveni addresing people at the event
President Yoweri Kaguta
Museveni has again written a missive explaining why he thinks the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) should be taken back to the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF).
The President’s
missive this time was, although not expressly stated, a response to former finance minister and Makerere University Chancellor Prof. Ezra Suruma.
Suruma this week argued against rationalizing UCDA, saying MAAIF doesn’t have the competency, let alone the human resources, to manage Uganda’s budding
coffee industry.
Suruma said, that coffee that fetches the most foreign exchange of
all agricultural produce, is too precious to be put back to the ministry whose
civil servants are under no pressure to deliver.
But in his missive, Museveni
said he is used to opposition against many of his flagship projects.
“I have read the pieces of Dr. Suruma. It is good that
he is reminding us of how the Coffee Marketing Board (CMB) was about to kill the
coffee industry by misdirecting crop finance to corruption instead of paying
farmers. At one time, I had to borrow $ 100 million, I think, from Muammar
Gaddafi to provide crop finance. I solved this by liberalizing the buying of
coffee. I remember, even that time, some people were opposing us. Nothing new,”
Museveni said.
Museveni said the country has been spending a lot of
money on Agencies and Authorities more than it has been spending on ministries
which absorb more people.
“You remember,
the figures were Shs. 2.6 trillion for the Ministries and Shs. 2.2 trillion for
the Agencies and Authorities by 2016, according to the Saleh committee that
woke us up. In our usual resistance culture of always being guided by facts, I
have now inquired more. What was the number of employees in the respective clusters
this money was being spent on? The answer; in Agencies and Authorities, the
employees were 3,905, in Ministries, the number was 18,532 plus the undisclosed
number of soldiers,” Museveni said.
Museveni said the discrepancies were brought about by
the fact that public servants in ministries were getting small salaries,
and allowances and having less operational funds.
“As our revenue collections improve, which they will
after removing the corruption in URA, which is itself an Authority but
collecting only 13.9% of GDP as tax, we shall be able to pay the other Public
Servants better… By the end of this financial year, our GDP will be USD 57.5
billion. 20% of that would give us USD 11.5 billion. At the exchange rate of
Ug.sh.3,700 per dollar, that would give us tax revenue of Ug.sh. 42.55
trillion. If we hit 25% of GDP, then the situation will be quite different,”
Museveni said.
Museveni also reemphasized that it’s the NRM, through
political mobilization by Operation Wealth Creation headed by his brother Salim
Saleh that has expanded the growing of coffee and also other crops and not organizations
like UCDA and Dairy Development Authority.
“In the Kisozi area, I have not seen UCDA or DDA. With
crops, I am always with Kakwenzire, Balemezi, Nalwanga, etc. With Cattle, I am,
sometimes, with Kaddu and other vets. I have never seen DDA in my battles with
nature and the livestock,” Museveni said.
Museveni today is meeting members of
his NRM parliamentary caucus to stress again why parliament must pass the Coffee
Amendment Bill that will collapse the UCDA.
