“Africa is huge and endowed with a lot of natural resources but has been under populated. These natural resources need to be exploited,” President Yoweri Museveni has said.
The President made the remarks on Wednesday in a meeting with officials from Citi Bank at State House, Entebbe.
He emphasized the need for commercial banks to support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and invest in Uganda as a way of getting Ugandans out of poverty.
The President also noted that other countries like China have heavily invested in Uganda and this has saved Uganda a lot of money in importing finished goods, noting that Uganda has raw materials and a lot of goods can be made here by adding value to them.
“The Chinese are making ceramic tiles among other things; every day I am called to open a certain Chinese factory, and this is really good for the country.”
President Museveni noted that India which is twelve times smaller than Africa is highly populated but with few natural resources and yet it is far more developed.
“The biggest challenge we have always had is that our people have been into subsistence farming, working for the stomach only and this is dangerous to the society,” he noted.
“Therefore, we, the freedom fighters, our struggle has been how to get our people from a non-money economy to a money economy but with ekibaaro,” the President noted.
Commenting on commercial banks, the President said the banks have been supporting imports and leaving the SMEs, which is not good as these imports do not do much in developing the country and, therefore, the economy remains stagnant.
President Museveni also noted that for development to take place, there must be infrastructure in place such as railways and electricity.
He therefore welcomed Citi Bank’s willingness to fund the building of Kampala-Tororo-Malaba Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) line in Uganda. Citi Bank is in talks with the Ministry of Finance to fund the construction of the SGR line to a tune of USD2billion.
Mr. David Livingstone, Citi Bank’s Executive Officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa, thanked the President for welcoming them and promised to heed to the President’s call to invest in Uganda and support SMEs.
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