I want more investors not loans, says Museveni

President Museveni has urged investors in Uganda to invite their fellows to invest more in the country following a recent loan freeze by the World Bank.

"I do not need loans so much. What I need are investors. Bring in more to do more investments. This one is not lending me money but bringing in investment money not loans," Museveni said on Friday while commissioning Uganda’s first ever railway concrete sleeper factory whose construction was contracted to a Spanish Group, Imathia Construction.

He added: "I want you to do more work.  You can remain the owners as long as there are factories here, they should not put you [us] on pressure."

Museveni hailed the proprietors of the factory, led by the company’s chairman Julian Garcia Velverde, for “helping Uganda achieve part of its vision of building an economy that is integrated, independent, and self-sustaining.”

“I want to thank the Spanish Group for helping us in implementing part of this effort because Uganda needs the railway system which needs a number of things like sleepers and rails," he noted.

Velverde told journalists that the concrete plant in Eastern Uganda has 90 per cent local staff and young Ugandan employees are able to operate the factory.  

“The investment we have here has the capacity to supply sleepers for all the rehabilitation works the railway is undergoing. I appeal to you to consider utilizing this new technology in Uganda and replace the current steel sleepers with these concrete sleepers,” he remarked in Buikwe District on September 1.

Notably, the factory has a daily production of 208 concrete sleepers of meter gauge for the refurbishment of Kampala-Namanve-Mukono.

“The concrete sleepers increase safety, comfort, and speed, as well as decrease the maintenance cost of the track, and there are fewer vandalism-associated costs,” Valverde observed.  

Still on Friday, Museveni said his government is in the final stages of developing Uganda’s own steel industry to help the country start manufacturing rails which will also be used in the construction of railway lines. 

Works and Transport minister Gen Edward Katumba Wamala hinted that the steel industry is being developed in Kabale District with capacity to distribute products in different parts of Africa.