The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives has held a meeting with board members of the Presidential CEO Forum for Uganda in which they discussed how to strengthen the collaboration between the two institutions to address the critical challenges faced by investors/manufacturers with a goal of achieving Uganda’s strategy of expanding the size of the economy to USD 500 billion by 2040.
In a meeting that was chaired by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives Hon. Sanjay Tanna, and attended by the Minister of State for Trade Hon. Gen. Wilson Mbasu Mbadi, the chairman of the Presidential CEO Forum and the Executive Chairman of Cipla Quality Chemicals Industries Limited, Emmanuel Katongole, noted that the CEO Forum desires a strong working relationship with the Ministry of Trade to address the bottlenecks faced by manufacturers and industrialists that have greatly contributed to the rising cost of doing business.
Katongole said among the most pressing challenges is the increasing number of sub-standard products on the Ugandan market that outcompete the genuine products by the registered manufacturers, and the delays in certification of products.
“There are many people duplicating our products. We have engaged UNBS on the issue of certification and the substandard products on the market, however, little has been done to address these issues. Our complaints to UNBS also take long to be responded to”, exclaimed Katongole
He also noted the fragmented supply chains, the limited access to finance, limited value addition to Ugandan products, coupled with the increasing corruption, has cripple the country’s industrialization agenda. “Most of our products leave the country with limited or no processing, and therefore, we end up exporting the jobs and incomes for our people”, noted Katongole
Katongole added that Government and the private sector alone cannot independently solve all these bottlenecks to Uganda’s industrialization agenda. He called for a coordinated execution framework founded on trust, evidence, and continuous dialogue.
Deo Kayemba, a board member of the Presidential CEO Forum and managing director East African Roofing Systems Limited emphasized to strengthen the capacity of UNBS saying ‘quality is the key passport to the market’. He urged the ministry of Trade to expedite the implementation of the competition law to regulate the big players in the market and protect the MSMEs from the big players who receive incentives from government.
In response, Hon. Gen. Wilson Mbasu Mbadi explained that the Ministry of Trade is working closely with UNBS to enhance the agency’s capacity to address the challenge of substandard products and with the recently enhanced UNBS budget, the amount of time taken to certify products has reduced from 4 months to 1 and half to 2 months, and the time taken to clear imported products has also tremendously reduced from 10 to 15 days to 3 hours for compliant clients.
Mbadi reiterated the ministry’s commitment to sustaining the markets that Uganda has negotiated by ensuring that the country has the right quality and quantities. “We need to build a robust cooperative union to boost production, address the Non-Tariff Barriers especially with our neighbors in the EAC, give support to our MSMEs and reduce time for clearance at the borders in order to boost trade”, said Mbadi
Hon. Sanjay Tanna acknowledged that there are some unscrupulous individuals within UNBS that his ministry is going to deal with to ensure that the agency serves the purpose for which it was established.
He noted that Uganda’s Ten-Fold Strategy is attainable because the government has already laid a foundation by working on the infrastructure especially the roads, power supply, water supply among others, and also provided the security. What needs to be done is to work with technocrats to ensure that government programmes reach the intended beneficiaries.
Tanna implored the Presidential CEO Forum to change the way they are doing things and use the platform to properly guided the investors. He urged them to work with his ministry develop a digitalized electronic database for all industries in Uganda. “We have failed to properly plan for our people because we do not have the correct statistics with each institution producing their own figures”, noted Tanna
He also urged all stakeholders to put emphasis on skilling Ugandans instead of accumulating paper qualifications saying industries are looking for skilled people not qualifications.
