Investments to create 150,000 jobs

By Barbara Among

A total of 149,659 jobs will be created from projects licenced by the Uganda Investment Authority last year.

A total of 323 projects were registered, with $1.7b injected. They are expected to create the huge number of jobs, according to the state minister for finance and planning, Ephraim Kamuntu.


Kamuntu was speaking at the launch of the Uganda investment report for 2010.

This implies that there was a 3% rise in planned investment and a 36% increment in planned jobs compared to 2009, where planned investment and employment were estimated at $1.6b and 70,289 respectively.

The minister attributed this to the efforts of the authority, which came into existence in 1991.

Manufacturing (119 projects) financial services (63 projects) and agriculture (50 project) took centre stage, accounting for 20%, 18% and 40% of the planned investments respectively.

For the fourth year running, Uganda tops the list of investors with 143 projects, with planned investments of $1.1b. This created 130,004 jobs.

Second to Uganda was India with 47 projects, worth $173m and China with 33 projects worth $65m.

The UK had 13 projects licenced last year worth $77m and created 970 jobs.

UIA executive director Maggie Kigozi said the authority awarded 650 companies concessions to explore in the different mining areas. Uganda has over 100 minerals, she said.
“Once these 650 companies are licensed and start operations, and given rising interest in the mining sector, the Government is projecting higher foreign direct investment in 2011,” said Kigozi.

Kigozi said planned investments for 2011 is $3b and foreign direct investments at $1b.

The authority hopes to meet the target by selling Uganda’s potential at several conferences.

Kigozi announced that Uganda would host the East African Petroleum Conference next month. This month, a delegation of authority officials is expected to travel to India for the Gujarat Summit to sell Uganda’s investment potentials.

In March, there will be a COMESA Investment Conference in Dubai and the authority is inviting the business community to participate.

Commenting on a recent a report by UNDP on productivity which portrayed Ugandans as less productive than Kenyans and Tanzanians, Kamuntu said that UIA, Bank of Uganda, and Uganda Bureau of Statistics revealed that 96.6% of the workers in 1,000 companies surveyed are Ugandans.

He said the survey found that although Uganda has the most educated people in the region, they lack the technical industrial experience.

Meanwhile, Kamuntu yesterday assured investors in the country that the February elections would not affect the economic and political stability in the country.