Deceit: Will the revival of state enterprises work in Uganda?

Mr Byekwaso is a university lecturer. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

Competition. How will Uganda Airlines, whose operations are most likely not to be profitable because it will be competing with other airlines within the region as well as others from the rest of the world, be a self-sustaining enterprise without being a burden to the Treasury?

For undertaking a pro-market economic reform, Uganda was portrayed as a success in promoting economic growth and fighting poverty by the donors. However, the success story was questioned even in the Western press (see Lambert 2005 p18). Even if it was portrayed that poverty was reducing (presenting the most wretched life as paradise using persistent propaganda as Hitler advised (in Carr 1939 [1983] p144) , the reduction was not and continues not to be felt by the majority of the people. Instead they are increasingly experiencing hardships.

Commenting on a survey carried out in 2008, Sunday Monitor (2009 p3), observed that “after the so-called ‘anti-poverty programmes, past and present, aimed at moving the country from its largely peasant subsistence economy to an industrialised one, most families are going without adequate food, water, medicines, cooking fuel and cash – in a word, we have become a nation of deprivation”. The situation continues to worsen. The report released by FAO together with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries in 2016, indicated that 70 percent of the country’s population goes without food for at least one day (New Vision March 31, 2016 p4).

Further, when the economy has been in a poor state to the extent that some “patriotic” Ugandans did not want its shape to be commented on for fear of scaring away investors, as well as its GDP growth could be in negative as some critical economists have argued, the government has come up with the propaganda of recovery stated in the 2018/19 Budget speech.

Actually, from 2016 onwards, the propaganda of poverty fast-reducing has been replaced by the propaganda of the quality of life and standards of living tremendously improving. When a big number of families lack food at home and as a result fight for it in wedding and burial ceremonies, it was claimed in the background to the Budget of 2016/17 that “the share of households with access to two meals a day, for household members aged five years and above, was more than a half (51 per cent)” between 2002 and 2014.

When in the past, press and other reports indicated that child malnutrition was a very serious problem and on the rise (see for instance, Saturday Vision 2011; Sewanyana and Kasirye 2011), now it is claimed that there is an improvement in the nutritional status. What has brought the improvement when hunger has been ravaging the country as a result of drought that has been going on intermittently for a long time?

When the pro-market economic reforms have displaced many peasants from land in rural areas where life has been made too difficult to bear by low and fluctuating prices (see Byekwaso at ndinawebyekwaso.com) and as a result have been compelled to migrate to urban areas, especially to the city, hoping for a better life, but only to find themselves in the squalid environment of the slums without a sure source of livelihood, now it is claimed that their quality of life has improved tremendously in the 2018/19 Budget speech! When industrialisation has been halted by the policies of the neoliberal reform, the theme of the Budgets of 2017/18 and 2018/19 is: “Industrialisation for job creation and shared prosperity”! This is the politics of deceit Machiavellian style. Even the industrialisation said to be existence in the country is not genuine because it includes mining and quarrying, formal and informal generation and supply of electricity, supply of water, and construction of buildings. There is no serious manufacturing going on in the country.

Can you imagine that we import simple things like handkerchiefs? It should be remembered that the policies of the neoliberal reform imposed on the country by the World Bank and IMF dismantled the industries, such as textile industries, which existed before and therefore discouraged the development of the national economy, including the emergence of national middle class. As a result, the performance of the economy deteriorated, especially in the manufacturing sector, as well as getting slimmer and with no reliable data on it.

Under the reform, privatisation programme was undertaken in the name of reducing government expenditure and promoting efficient operations. To speed up the process, the World Bank lent Uganda $100m. Did this reduce government expenditure? This is characteristic of foreign modern forces. They are non-rational with no specific objectives.

Now after the neoliberal policies have virtually destroyed the economy and firmly cultivated the spirit of individualism, thereby entrenching corruption in Ugandan society, there are plans to recapitalise Uganda Development Corporation to finance state-owned enterprises. Will corruption spare the management of these enterprises? Is it surprising that the revival of Uganda Airlines has started by the purchase of aircrafts as the press has reported? How will Uganda Airlines, whose operations are most likely not to be profitable because it will be competing with other airlines within the region as well as others from the rest of the world, be a self-sustaining enterprise without being a burden to the Treasury?

Is it by coincidence or accident that the government is proposing other types of irrational expenditure? For instance, President Museveni is reported to have directed recently that preparations be made to buy armoured vehicles for the security of MPs that is estimated to cost the country a lot of money. However, the practice of the government spending money irrationally under the influence of foreign modern forces is not new. It has only been stepped up.
It should be remembered that the first external loan Uganda got was to pay retirement benefits of departing colonial civil servants (Nyamugasira 2001, 4).

Mr Byekwaso is a university lecturer. [email protected]