President Yoweri Museveni Thursday said that Uganda’s real economy has been thriving well even in the presence of the coronavirus.
President Yoweri Museveni Thursday said that Uganda’s thriving real economy has been effective in enabling the country to cope with effects posed by the deadly coronavirus.
Museveni who was delivering his fifth and last State of the Nation Address of the 10th Parliament, said that the real economy, especially in areas of agriculture and industry, has been growing even at a faster rate despite worries of collapsing.
As of today, it is now 79 days since the lockdown was launched on the 18th of March, 2020. In response to the corona-virus pandemic, the government put to a standstill many activities and businesses countrywide including suspension of all international passenger flights coming into and out of the country.
This has since raised worries among locals that the country’s economy will experience a fall as a post coronavirus era.
However, the President was first to refute these claims explaining that despite the deadly virus having tremendously affected the vulnerable sector, it did not affect the real economy in any way.
According to Museveni, the real economy unlike the vulnerable one is durable and deals with basic needs and for any country to continue surviving even during hard times of the war or a disease outbreak, it should invest more money in boosting its real economy because it cannot collapse.
“The Real Economy is comprised of: agriculture, industry, ICT and some of the services (the professional services such as engineering, medical, legal, etc). It is economy that deals with the nine (9) basic human needs of food, clothing, shelter, medicine, security, physical infrastructure (the railways, the roads, the electricity, the telephones, etc.), health infrastructure (hospitals etc.), the education infrastructure (schools, etc.) as well as the teaching of numeracy, literacy, skilling and intellectuality and the spiritual work (churches, mosques, radios, TVs, etc).
“When this global crisis, therefore, descended on the World, I started hearing screams of pessimism coming from all sorts of sources. Immediately, I authored two documents that I will distribute to all the Honourable Members of Parliament (MPs) that talked about the “Real Economy”, on the one hand, as well as the “Vulnerable Economy”, Museveni said.
Meanwhile, on the vulnerable economy, the President said that it is also important but not very urgent because any country can survive and live when it’s the vulnerable economy is lagging extremely behind.
He said that unlike those sectors falling under the real economy, most of the sectors comprising the vulnerable economy such as pleasure, entertainment and tourism are optional and an individual or any country will not die or collapse in their absence.
“This vulnerable economy also happens to be the economy of leisure and pleasure. Leisure and pleasure, are optional. If you can get them, it is all right. If you cannot, you will, however, survive, nevertheless. These are activities that add leisure and pleasure to a human being; but, if necessary, he/she can survive without them. They are optional and additional. These are sectors like tourism, entertainment, bars, night-clubs, cruises on ocean-liners, theatre-going, import-business for luxuries (carpets, perfumes, wines, spirits, wigs, etc). Some of these activities are not only for pleasure, leisure and optional, they are also parasitic. They take nutrients from us and do not add any energies for our growth.
These are activities like the imports of luxuries. Luxuries are good. We should, however, produce them ourselves. It is so wrong to buy luxuries from other countries when they buy little from us. Banyankore calls this: “obubaagyi” (squandering wealth). Some of the leisure sectors, although vulnerable, they are, at least, beneficial. These are sectors like tourism, entertainment, etc. They bring in money instead of taking out money ─ out of Uganda,” Museveni added.
