KAMPALA — The Minister for the Presidency, Hon. Babirye Milly Babalanda, has called for the re-engineering of Uganda’s development financing architecture to support the country’s ambition of growing its economy tenfold, from approximately US$50 billion to US$500 billion by 2040.
Minister Babalanda made the remarks today during the High-Level Policy Dialogue on Uganda’s Development Financing Architecture, held at Sheraton Hotel, Kampala.
The Minister commended H.E. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni for his strategic leadership and clear direction in advancing Uganda’s socio-economic transformation.
“Under His Excellency’s leadership, Uganda has set an ambitious development trajectory through the Tenfold Growth Strategy to expand the economy from approximately US$50 billion to US$500 billion by 2040, driven by sustained double-digit growth and transformation of the productive sectors,” she said.
She noted that the strategy is ambitious and requires a fundamental expansion in productive capacity, investment, value addition, exports and employment. More importantly, she said, it requires a financing architecture capable of mobilising and deploying capital at a significantly greater scale.
“The question before us is fundamental: How do we finance an economy that we intend to grow tenfold? This is not simply a question of finding more money. It is about whether our financing architecture can support the scale and nature of transformation Uganda has set out to achieve,” the Minister said.
Hon. Babalanda said the Tenfold Growth Strategy places particular emphasis on four anchor sectors: agro-industrialisation, tourism development, mineral development, including oil and gas, and science, technology and innovation, including ICT.
She explained that these sectors are expected to drive production, productivity, value addition, exports, investment, employment and higher household incomes. She stressed that Uganda’s financing architecture must therefore connect the country’s national development ambitions with the capital required to deliver them.
Citing the Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV), the Minister said implementation over the five-year period is estimated to require approximately UGX 593.6 trillion, with 69.6 percent expected from the public sector and 30.4 percent from the private sector.
“These figures demonstrate that delivering NDP IV and ultimately the Tenfold Growth Strategy will require significant resources from both Government and the private sector,” she said.
Minister Babalanda said Government will continue strengthening domestic revenue mobilisation and directing resources towards national priorities. However, she acknowledged that Uganda cannot finance its transformation through the national budget alone.
“We must broaden our financing base by mobilising more domestic capital, strengthening development finance, deepening our capital markets, expanding Public-Private Partnerships, attracting greater private investment and making better use of innovative financing instruments,” she said.
She called for the exploration of opportunities in pension and insurance funds, climate and green finance, blended finance, Islamic finance and other long-term financing mechanisms to bring diverse sources of capital into a coherent national financing framework.
The Minister also emphasised the need to increase national savings to 40 percent of GDP by 2040, as envisaged under the Tenfold Growth Strategy.
She posed four critical questions for the dialogue:
1. How can Uganda convert its growing domestic savings into productive, long-term investment?
2. How can the country deepen its capital markets so that businesses and major national projects can access long-term financing?
3. How can development finance institutions be strengthened to support productive sectors more effectively?
4. How can appropriate instruments be created to enable pension funds, insurance funds and other institutional investors to participate safely in financing national development?
“A country seeking sustained economic transformation must progressively build the capacity to mobilise and invest its own capital,” she said.
Hon. Babalanda stressed that the Tenfold Growth Strategy cannot be delivered by Government alone. She said the private sector must be positioned not merely as a beneficiary of government policy, but as a central investment and financing partner in Uganda’s transformation.
According to the Minister, this requires Government to use its resources more strategically to leverage and crowd in private capital. She noted that some investments will have to be financed directly by Government, others by the private sector, while some will require joint financing through Public-Private Partnerships, blended finance and risk-sharing arrangements.
The Minister said Uganda values the contributions of development partners and international financial institutions, but noted that such partnerships must evolve in line with the country’s changing development ambitions.
“Beyond traditional development assistance, we should increasingly explore partnerships that support investment, trade, technology transfer, productive capacity, access to affordable long-term capital and mobilisation of private investment,” she said.
She added that concessional resources will remain important for essential public investments but should be deployed more strategically to de-risk investments and leverage larger flows of private and institutional capital.
Hon. Babalanda reminded delegates that financing is not an end in itself. Resources mobilised must ultimately translate into increased production and productivity, value addition, exports, employment, enterprise growth, higher household incomes and improved living standards.
She tasked the dialogue with providing clarity on three fundamental issues:
– The financing architecture Uganda requires to implement the Tenfold Growth Strategy;
– The policy, regulatory and institutional reforms needed to mobilise domestic, private, institutional and international capital at scale; and
– The immediate reforms and actions that Government and its development partners must undertake to accelerate implementation.
The high-level dialogue brought together Members of Parliament; the Head of Public Service and Secretary to Cabinet; the Executive Director of the National Planning Authority; heads of Government institutions; representatives of development partners and international financial institutions; leaders from the private sector and financial institutions; among other stakeholders.
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