BIG STORY: Museveni denies ever saying Uganda attained ‘middle-income status’

KAMPALA, UGANDA: President Museveni has denied ever saying that Uganda attained middle-income status, after weeks of bickering on contrasting figures between the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and the World bank statistics.

During the State of the Nation Address at Kololo independence grounds last month, President Museveni revealed a shocker that left many economists declaring that Uganda had attained the middle-income status despite the largest part of the population languishing in utter poverty.

Mr. Museveni argued that despite the tough economic times, Uganda as a country had surpassed the prerequisites to be a middle-income nation and that Uganda would maintain it for the next three years to be fully in the league of countries in the same bracket.

“This means that the GDP per capita is $1046. We have now passed that figure of middle-income status ($1030)”, Museveni said during his State of the Nation address last month in Kampala.

The declaration left many wondering where the president was getting his figures on Uganda’s middle-income prompting the World Bank to query the president’s figures saying Uganda was still far from the Middle-income dream according to their statistics.

“Uganda’s gross national income per capita stood at about $840 in FY21 and has increased only marginally in the year since” Said World Bank in a report shortly after Museveni’s declaration

Recently during the launch of the Public Policy Executive Oversight Forum (Apex) at Kololo last week, Museveni questioned the world bank figures insisting that Uganda is a middle-income country according to the figures he has on his table.

“The economy is growing. The other day, I had some arguments about whether we have gone to middle income or not. We reaffirm. I do not know where the World Bank is getting their data from”, Museveni said

“But our data about our country is that we are now at GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita of $1046 and that is already in the middle income. We need to stay there for three more years or go up to be declared officially. We have got some money and the things to do are many. That is why priotization becomes important”- Museveni added

However, in a twist of events now, the president has reportedly denied ever saying Uganda is a middle-income country and made some clarifications on what he meant according to local newspaper TheObserver.

“I didn’t say we have already become but I said we are entering middle-income status,” Mr. Museveni said in a recent interview with WION TV after weeks of a protracted-factual confrontation involving the World Bank (WB) and Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos).

He clarified: “What I said was that the GDP per capita at 1,046 has just entered the middle-income bracket which is $1,036. There’s no contradiction (with WB),” he said in an interview with World Is One News (WION).

The president acknowledged that Uganda must sustain its already overheating economy with a GDP above $1,036 for three consecutive years.
“But in order to be declared officially, I said in my speech that you need to maintain that or surpass it,” he emphasized on July 16.