The Minister for Trade, Industry and Cooperatives, Amelia Kyambadde has assured Ugandans that the industrial sector is on rapid growth.
Kyambadd,e who was addressing journalists at Media Centre on Wednesday about the commemoration of Africa Industrialisation Day, said government efforts towards strengthening sector are in high gear in increasing energy sources and improving infrastructure
“Government targets to exploit the abundant renewable energy sources to increase power generation to 2,500MW by 2020. The commissioning of the Isimba Hydro Power Plant in March 2019 increased the country’s installed generation capacity to 1,200 MW. The commissioning of Karuma Hydro Power Plant (600MW) is planned for December 2019 and will increase the capacity to 1800MW. After commissioning of Karuma, Government expects electricity tariffs for industrial use to reduce to about US$ 5 cents per kWh from the current US$ 8 cents,” she said.
On the side of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), she said that the National Backbone Infrastructure has generated commendable progress in expanding access to information. This has been made possible through the construction of fibre optic cables spanning 2,424km connecting 39 districts.
“We have also embarked on acquisition and development of land to make available 22 Industrial and Business Parks (IBP) across Uganda. Works have so far been commissioned in a total of 10 industrial parks including four privately owned parks,” said Kyambadde.
The public parks include Kampala IBP Namanve; Bweyogerere IBP; Luzira IBP; Jinja IBP; Soroti IBP; Mbarara SME Park and Kasese IBP. The four privately owned parks are Liao Shen IBP Kapeeka; Tangshen IBP Mbale; MMP IBP Buikwe and Jinja IBP.
According to Kyambadde, the sector grew by 5.8 per cent in Financial Year (F/Y) 2018/19, manufacturing sub-sector registered 2.8 per cent growth in the FY compared to 1.7 per cent in 2017/18.
“The Number of industries has grown to more than 4,780. The Iron and Steel industry now has 28 steel industries and its installed capacity has doubled to 1.7 million tons per annum from 866,000 tons five years ago. The Cement Industry has expanded to five cement factories more than doubling annual production to 4.43 million tons, from 2 million tons five years ago,” she added.
Kyambadde said currently Uganda is able also to benefit from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Markets.
“The AfCFTA provides a market of about $3 trillion and a consumer base of more than 1.3 billion people. With this, Africa’s manufacturing sector is projected to double in size by 2025 and create millions of jobs,” said Kyambadde.
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