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When Uganda intends to start producing oil in 2025, economic growth is anticipated to reach 7%, which would aid in Uganda’s massive public debt entering a “declining trend.”
This is according to the country’s ministry of finance, who had earlier warned that Uganda is concerned about the expanding public debt load and surging debt-servicing expenses, and similar reservations have been raised by the central bank and others.
This report is courtesy of the American news agency, Reuters.
To assist relieve its debt woes, the ministry announced it will not conduct any external borrowing in the next financial year starting in July.
The Ugandan government will not engage in any external borrowing in the financial year that starts in July to relieve debt-servicing strains, the finance ministry had earlier noted, stating, “there will be no new borrowing next financial year and this shall continue over the short to medium term so as to minimize… revenues being used to service debt.”
Ramathan Ggoobi, Uganda finance ministry’s top Treasury official, said in a statement sent out by the Media Centre, the government’s communications department, “we expect public debt as a share of GDP to be on a declining trend, on the back of robust economic growth.”
Ramathan Ggoobi added, “in the medium term, economic growth will be driven primarily by activities in the oil and gas sector… We project that real GDP growth will increase to over 7 percent at the start of commercial oil production.”
Uganda intends to begin exporting crude oil from fields in its western region, close to the Democratic Republic of the Congo border, in 2025.
In January, China’s CNOOC (0883. HK) launched the drilling program for the first production well in the fields which it co-owns with France’s TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) and Uganda’s national oil company.
The central bank estimates that as of October, the total public debt of the nation was around $21 billion, or just under 50% of GDP.
