Accounting officers to sign performance contracts – Minister Bahati

You recently presented the Second National Development Plan (NDPII) to Parliament for approval. What is it about and how different is it from the first one?
The Plan is in line with the Uganda Vision 2040 and builds on the achievements registered under the First National Development Plan (NDPI), while taking into consideration the challenges encountered and lessons learnt during its implementation. The Plan is also about leveraging the country’s growth opportunities and honoring development and partnership obligations at the national, regional and global levels.

What are the key objectives of this Plan?
Our plan is to achieve middle income status by 2020. This will be realized through strengthening the country’s competitiveness for sustainable wealth creation, employment and inclusive growth. Some of the objectives set by the plan therefore include increasing sustainable production, productivity and value addition in key growth opportunities.
We also want to increase the stock and quality of strategic infrastructures to accelerate the country’s competitiveness.
Other key objectives include enhancing human capital development and strengthening mechanisms for quality, effectiveness and efficient service delivery.

What development strategies have you put in place to ensure the Plan is successful?
Several strategies shall be pursued.
We want to ensure there is more industrialization and export oriented growth through value addition agro-processing, mineral beneficiation, selected heavy and light manufacturing.
We also shall have to ensure macro-economic stability with fiscal expansion for frontloading infrastructure investments.
There is an employment creation strategy through fast tracking skills development and harnessing the demographic dividend. There will also be a strong public/private partnership for sustainable development. This will be in addition to a private sector-led growth and a quasi-market approach. Not forgetting the strengthening of governance and accountability mechanisms and structures for effective service delivery.

What results do we hope to see by 2020?
We want to reduce the percentage of our people who survive on less than dollar per day from 19.7% to 6.3%. We are also aiming at reducing the gross inequalities between the rich and the poor so as to have inclusive and participatory development.
We shall see a reduction in the number of young people who are out of school or out of employment by at least 20 per cent. We hope to increase manufactured exports as a percentage of total exports from 5.8 per cent to 19 per cent.
By 2020, the per cent of the population with access to electricity is expected to increase from 14 per cent to 30 per cent, while access to safe water in rural areas will rise from 65 per cent to 79. In urban centres it will increase from 77 per cent to 100 per cent.
There will be more paved roads while we also want to reduce drastically .and if possible do away with the number of our mothers who die while giving birth. We want to end the percentage deaths of our infants and children under five. The Plan also puts in place strategies to encourage people to have manageable family sizes and the child stunting rate will also go down.

How much is the Plan expected to cost and who is going to sponsor it?
The overall cost of the NDPII is estimated at approximately Shs185.2 trillion of which Shs100.4 trillion is government funding and Shs84.8 trillion is private sector contribution. Whereas, on the public side there is a financing gap of about 14 per cent over the plan period, this gap could be filled through increased revenue generation efforts and off budget financing.

Given the perceived corruption, red tape bureaucracy, slow decision making in public offices; how do you intend to overcome these bottlenecks in order to fulfill the plan?
First of all we decided that all accounting officers at national and local government level will sign performance contracts in line with NDPII results and targets.
We also want to establish and facilitate a proactive private sector/civil society forum to discuss the progress in the implementation of the NDPII.
A delivery unit at the Office of the Prime Minister will also be created with a fully-functional technical team to fast track implementation of core projects.
Actually the NPA will issue a certificate of compliance to all ministries, departments and agencies to ensure that all their plans and budgets adhere to NDPII before they are approved by Parliament.

What are the Plan’s priorities?
The Plan prioritises investment in three key sectors which are agriculture; tourism and the minerals, oil and gas sector. The Plan will also focus on two fundamentals; infrastructure and human capital development.
For instance in agriculture, emphasis will be placed on investing in 12 enterprises like cotton, coffee, tea, maize, rice, cassava, beans, fish, beef, milk, citrus and bananas along the value chains. Focus will also be on strengthening research, increasing access to agricultural financing, especially for the women. We also want to implement technology adaptation at farm level and many other reforms.
Under tourism, the plan is to focus on improvement, diversification and exploitation of tourism products. Emphasis will be placed on aggressive marketing, investment in tourism facilitating infrastructure, appropriate skills development among others.
In the mineral, oil and gas sector, six key minerals are earmarked for exploitation and value addition. These are iron ore, limestone/marble, copper, phosphates, dimension stones and uranium.

What were the key achievements/failures of the of the first NDP?

The plan managed to reduce poverty from 24.5 per cent in 2009 to 19.7 per cent in 2013. Electricity generation increased from 595MW in 2010 to 825MW in 2012. Life expectancy at birth increased from 51.5 in 2009 to 54.5 years in 2012. Of course there are several others including reduction in under-five mortality rate, sustained peace, more roads etc
We can say Uganda only registered a modest increase in total employment during the last three years, human capital development remains a problem as well as the pupil-book ratio which has stagnated at an average of 4:1. The pupil teacher ratio has also remained at 49:1 but we hope to change all this by 2020.

What were the bottlenecks and how do you hope to overcome them in NDPII?
The key bottleneck was the mismatch among the key pillars of public policy formulation. These are planning, budgeting, implementation, expenditure and accountability. Some institutions have been budgeting for what they have not planned, implementing what they have not budgeted for, spending on what they have not implemented, and worse still, accounting for what they have not spent. This bad habit must stop. We must align these pillars in order to realize this plan.

How do you hope to take advantage of the current Population Dividend?
By implementing policies aimed at accelerating the decline in fertility. Ensuring that the resulting youth bulge (surplus labour force) is well educated, skilled, healthy and economically engaged. These can be attained by improving access to family planning services, improving nutrition and reforming the education system by biasing it towards building skills and innovations.

You have been talking much about Manpower Survey. When is it going to be down?
The manpower survey is going to be done in the coming financial year

Finally tell us... Uganda has good plans but most of them remain on the shelves of ministries. What is the problem?
It is important to note that successful implementation of Plans like this NDPII depends on a number of prerequisites. The failure to implement the plans might be a signal that certain prerequisites are not in place.
We consider the following prerequisites as very important if the country is to achieve the set targets; commitment at all levels; Ownership of the Plan by all; Effective use and management of information for decision making; Increased private sector capacity; Behavioural change, patriotism and elimination of corruption.