Bank of Uganda has revealed that Uganda’s public debt has hit Shs86Trn but only Shs18.747Trn has been provided in the 2023/2024 national budget to manage public debt .
The details are contained in the April 2023 State of the Economy Report which reads in part, “The provisional total public debt stock at nominal value as at end March 2023 stood at Shs86,352.6Trn (approximately 47.7 percent of GDP). The total public debt increased by 8.1 percent relative to the June 2022 number at cost and the increase was observed for both domestic and external debt.”
The report further reveals that the external debt maintained the lions share at 59.9 percent and warned that the Average time to Maturity (ATM) for domestic debt was above target at 6.8 years in March 2023, up from 5.9 years in March 2022 and 5.7 years in March 2021 which is consistent with Government’s strategy of lengthening the maturity structure.
In the 2022/2023 national budget, the treasury Operations has been allocated Shs18.747Trn up from Shs16.799Trn the entity was allocated to manage Uganda’s public debt. Of these funds, Shs6.013Trn will go towards interest payment on our public debt, while the rest of Shs12.733Trn will go towards other items in debt refinancing.
The Central Bank in its conclusion noted that although the economic activity remains resilient, the resilience has been inevitably negatively impacted by tight monetary and fiscal policies, adverse spillovers from the Russia-Ukraine war induced high global commodity prices, and tight global financial conditions.
