President Museveni
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.
