President Yoweri Museveni has once again spoken out on the status of Uganda’s oil.
Uganda has approximately 6.5 billion barrels, with at least 1.4 billion estimated to be economically recoverable.
In addition to producing and exporting crude oil, Uganda plans to build a refinery to produce petroleum products for the domestic and EAC markets.
Speaking about the status of the country’s oil at the celebrations to mark Uganda’s 59th anniversary on Saturday at the Kololo Independence Grounds, Museveni said the first oil is to be pumped out of the ground by 2025, “because all the agreements have been signed.”
Museveni was reminding the country about how far it has come despite the challenges.
“We managed a growth rate of 3.4% and in the current one, it is estimated that we shall achieve a rate of growth of 3.8%, the Covid19 related shutdowns notwithstanding,” he said.
By the end of June, 2022, Museveni says “our GDP will be standing at USD 40.43BN by foreign exchange method and at USD 117.3BN by the PPP method.”
He says that all this without including the contributions of the first oil to be pumped out of the ground.
In these two years, as many of you know, he said “we dealt successfully with problems of: Locusts’ invasion; the rising levels of the waters of the Lakes (the floods); the land-slides; the floating island that were threatening hydro dams; and the corona pandemic ─ where we minimized the deaths, recording a total of 3,150 deaths (as of 5th October, 2021), hitherto, in spite of the onslaught of the terrible disease, for now one year and seven months.”
All those challenges notwithstanding and in spite of the indiscipline of some actors, he adds “we successfully held the 2021 General Elections for President, Parliament and Local Governments, on time. Additionally, even our economy managed some growth in both the financial years 2020-2021 and the present financial year of 2021-2022.”
He, however, acknowledges the corruption and the corrupt.
“All these achievements are in spite of the corruption of some public officials, including some of the political actors. I congratulate the whistle-blowers who, patriotically, expose these criminals, parasites and traitors to their own people. I, therefore, congratulate the people of Uganda, the people of Africa (our brothers and sisters) and our partners in the World, because these achievements are not by our efforts alone. Our African brothers and sisters and our partners in the World, who buy our products (goods and services), contribute to this success,” he said.