{UAH} Allan/Edmund/Pojim/WBK: Fifth term: Can Museveni reset the button on service delivery? - News
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Fifth term: Can Museveni reset the button on service delivery?
President Yoweri Museveni signs documents at his inauguration ceremony at Kololo Airstrip on May 12, 2016. PHOTO | MORGAN MBABAZI | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The renewed promise by President Yoweri Museveni to turn Uganda into a middle-income country by 2020 will require a substantial policy reset, tight supervision in the delivery of public services and a clampdown on corruption – tasks that are as old as the target they seek to fulfil, but which will not easy to execute, analysts say.
For instance, task of cracking down on slow or non-performing public workers, as President Museveni promised on May 12, as he was swore in for his fifth term in office (or seventh if the first two unelected terms are included), is constrained by a bureaucracy that cannot easily be circumvented, noted Dr Hizaamu Ramadhan, of the Uganda Management Institute, who has researched public sector reforms in Uganda.
"The public service is governed by a stringent bureaucratic system that you cannot bend as you wish. So while the president's promises are good they require political will to be realised," said Dr Ramadhan, who has noted elsewhere that the absence of that will is what has failed previous reform processes from attaining the objectives for which they were undertaken.
"Any significant changes as the public service in the next five years are impossible and creating new structures or authorities to expedite political promises doesn't solve the problem. You still have organisational cultures that require a complete overhaul," added Dr Ramadhan.
According to Cissy Kagaba, who heads the anti-corruption coalition in Uganda, just as the public service is steeped in bureaucracy, corruption too is deeply embedded in government systems, to the point that it is what makes them function. To rid them of it without significant alterations is a difficult mission.
"Even if he as a person is willing, the systems, structures and individuals can easily frustrate his good will because he can't do it alone or be everywhere all the time," Ms Kagaba said.
President Museveni's renewed target of middle income country status comes on the back of an unflattering assessment by the International Monetary Fund, which concluded that five years is not enough for Uganda – or, for that matter, any other sub-Saharan country like it – to attain the goal its leader has set his sights on.
For at least the first three years of his latest term, neither the IMF nor Stanbic, Uganda's largest bank by assets, expects the country's GDP growth — currently forecast at slightly over five per cent for 2015/16 — to reach the 6.3 per cent mark that is necessary for his vision to be realised, according to the second National Development Plan that determined that threshold.
"Growth for the region [sub-Saharan Africa] as a whole fell to 3.5 per cent in 2015, the lowest level in some 15 years, and is set to decelerate further this year to 3 per cent — well below the 5 to 7 per cent range experienced over the past decade," noted the IMF in its Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa released on May 3.
Consequently, the Fund foresees a "robust and prompt policy response," which includes, among other things, building a sustainable tax base.
But recent efforts by Museveni's government to do exactly that, by way of extending taxation to the allowances of Members of Parliament, have run into resistance from the legislators who even threatened not to pass the financial year 2016/17 budget if their exemption was scrapped — signalling one of the major bottlenecks to mobilising revenue domestically.
Another hurdle that is still equally difficult to navigate is the sprawling informal sector, which the Uganda National Bureau of Standards estimated as accounting for 52.4 per cent of the GDP in its 2014 statistics.
"Even as efforts are being made to expand the tax base, the existence of a large informal sector remains an immense shortcoming in domestic revenue mobilisation and, indeed, in overall revenue performance; this gap could be even be higher if it remains untapped," said Doris Akol, the Commissioner General of Uganda Revenue Authority, in an op-ed a year ago.
According to Museveni, Uganda would have already attained its much desired status had his government decisively handled its exports portfolio – which he says they will now work hard on.
The National Export Development Strategy for 2015/16 to 2019/20, supposed to drive the focus on export growth, awaits Cabinet approval nearly a year after the draft was completed.
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