The Executive Director of the Private Sector Foundation Uganda, Mr Stephen Asiimwe, says the manufacturing sector should top government priorities in the Financial Year 2024/25.
Mr Asiimwe says the sector continues to grow with a lot of promise and ranks high among its regional peers as one of the best investment portfolios.
This comes at a time when the government set out numerous priorities in the latest National Budget to drive the country's economic growth.
Statistics shows that when Uganda's economy averaged 6.5 percent per annum in the 1990s and 2000s, it heavily relied on agriculture and low value-added industrial output with the majority of the country's manufactured products such as soap, sugar, steel, and cement mainly imported from Kenya as well as the Asian and European countries.
Even when the government laid out a number of sectors to drive the economy for the next one year, the private sector believes the government should normalise increasing the resource envelope of the manufacturing sector, which will encourage investment and enable the production of goods within the country's borders and help reduce imports and create jobs.
Mr Asiimwe says and when the money is released, it should be channeled to more productive areas like tourism to drive to Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions that will foster connections, promote new ideas and enhance economic growth.
"We had NAM and the G77 summits, they unlocked opportunities, when delegates were leaving the conferences they were not stopping from hall discussions, they move out and tour this presents good fruits for our tourism sector, this generates revenue and we benefit," he said.
Despite the government's efforts to strengthen the private sector through policies and programs aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and attracting foreign investment and facilitating business growth.
The sector still grapples with challenges such as inadequate infrastructure, access to finance and regulatory obstacles none the less, the sector continues to contribute significantly to the country's economy.
