President Museveni has said the last two years have shown that Uganda can stand on its own feet and deal with any challenges it faces.
“In these past two years -2020 and 2021- the new Uganda, has shown that it can stand on its feet and defeat any challenge,” Museveni said.
“In these two years, as many of you know, we dealt successfully with problems of locusts’ invasion; the rising levels of the waters of the lakes (the floods); the land–slides; the floating island that were threatening hydro dams and the Covid pandemic.”
The president was on Saturday speaking during the celebrations to mark the 59th Independence Day at Kololo ceremonial grounds.
According to Museveni in the past two years, Uganda has made great strides in dealing with some of the problems it faced, noting that the Covid pandemic which has now gone on for a year and seven months has been a big challenge but the country has persevered.
The pandemic also saw the closure of the economy due to the lockdown that saw a number of economic activities close.
The president however noted that despite all these, the economy continues to grow.
“Even our economy managed some growth in both the financial years 2020-2021 and the present financial year of 2021-2022.In the former, we managed a growth rate of 3.4% and in the current one, it is estimated that we shall achieve a rate of growth of 3.8%, the Covid19 related shutdowns notwithstanding,” he said.
He also noted that the country’s GDP is expected to grow to US$40.43billion, noting that this will go up when the country starts extracting oil.
Corruption
The also didn’t forget to point out corruption as one of the challenges that has affected the country’s growth.
He however noted that corruption notwithstanding, the economy has continued to make gains.
“All these achievements, are in spite of the corruption of some public officials, including some of the political actors. I congratulate the whistle-blowers who, patriotically, expose these criminals, parasites and traitors to their own people.”
