Kasaija’s Uganda is ready for take-off, all we need is to find a pilot on board

The word ‘job’ featured 13 times in last week’s Budget speech and for good reason: About 600,000 enter the job market each year, Finance minister Matia Kasaija announced, and four out of every 10 young Ugandans are currently out of work.
Under these circumstances, the theme of the speech – ‘Industrialisation for job creation and shared prosperity’ – made sense. Unfortunately, the speech fell short, in form and substance, on what needs to be done.
Let’s begin with form. Numbers, as this column has previously argued, only make sense with the proper context. Minister Kasaija, one of the most optimistic 75-year-olds you will find, was bullish about the 6.1 per cent growth in the economy, which he rightly claimed was higher than the previous year.
But set alongside inflation at 3.4 per cent and population growth rate at around 3.2 per cent, this pace of growth quickly becomes sub-optimal. So framing growth against previous year might create a warm feeling but the cold truth is that we need double-digit growth for things to become really transformational, and we are far behind that curve.
So, staying with form, if the lack of jobs is the biggest challenge we currently face, one would have expected the minister to tell us how many jobs the economy created last year and how many we expect this year. There was nothing there, and only a paragraph, in passing, about income inequality.
Average incomes, we were told, rose from $800 to $825 year-on-year. Not only is this lower than inflation, a more useful metric would have been median wages which, as official figures show, have actually fallen over the same period.
But let’s step away from the ground and try to make a big picture assessment of the Budget as a statement of intent in order to see if the proposed solutions make sense. To do this let’s summarise the problem: There are too many of us looking for jobs and not enough jobs to go around; agriculture’s place in the economy has shrunk relative to industry and services, but it still employs more than seven out of 10 people; and businesses do not have the capacity to expand (and create jobs) because of soft demand and expensive capital.
One common sense approach would be to manage population growth, increase agricultural productivity and reduce the cost of money, right? So how does the minister score on the common sense scale?
Lets see: First, there is no mention of plans to expand access to family planning and birth control. There is also no mention of Naads or its surrogate Operation Wealth Creation, which vacuum up billions every year in the name of supporting value-addition in agriculture. As you were, you under-performing peasants.
There is better news on cheaper money, with about Shs300 billion earmarked for Uganda Development Bank, micro-finance lending and skilling for youth and women entrepreneurs. But this is pocket change in the grand scheme of things. Domestic debt, for instance, is $3.8 billion (yes, that’s with a dollar sign and a ‘b’, not an ‘m’) and the government has a funding gap of close to Shs11 trillion, of which almost Shs3 trillion will be borrowed domestically.
In other words, banks must choose between lending to Muzamil and Sons with all the attendant risks, or to GoU with little or no risk. (Hint: Banks will pick government over Haji Muzamil, unless he is willing to pay through the nose).
Where the Budget fundamentally comes up short is in two areas: Its silence over how to unlock the impasse in the oil and gas sector, and its exasperation over incompetence and execution challenges.
It is well over a decade since Uganda struck commercial oil deposits and while attempts to get us a good deal are commendable, negotiating ad infinitum isn’t a sign of competence.
Unlocking the investments that oil and gas would bring into the economy should be a top priority for all in government, including the Finance minister.
Yet here Mr Kasaija should receive sympathy, not scorn. The reading of the Budget is a delegated function and its writing and strategic focus is above even his pay grade. Similarly, neither he nor the prime minister is capable of getting projects to start and finish on time.
Finding the money to buy new aircraft is sometimes easier than ensuring that the preparatory work has been done and the planes are ready to fly when they arrive. As is often the case, the story of our budget is one of what could have been, not what will be. When grandparents are more enthusiastic about life than their grandchildren, it is either time to worry or be optimistic. It is awfully confusing, to be honest.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and a poor man’s freedom fighter. [email protected].
Twitter: @Kalinaki.