Carol Namagembe, the deputy executive director Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG) has urged government to get alternative markets for the coffee and other products which Uganda was exporting to Sudan before war broke out.
From April 15, the situation escalated in Sudan as rival factions loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Mohamed Hamdan Daglo commanded Rapid Support Forces (RSF) went to war.
Over 400 people are reported killed with thousands fleeing the conflict that has disrupted regional trade.
For example, Sudan has been Uganda’s biggest African coffee destination, importing 0.8million bags of coffee out of the 4.6 million bags total exports.
“In terms of trade we are highly affected because they (Sudan) have been our biggest importers of our coffee,” Uganda’s ambassador to Khartoum Dr Rashid Yahya Ssemuddu observed on Thursday.
Speaking in Kampala on the sidelines of the press conference of CSO’s perspective on the ministerial policy statement at the CSBAG head office on Thursday this week, Namagembe advised “government not to sit down and wait for the war to end, which we are not even sure when it will end.”
“We are aware of the risk Sudan is bringing but we want to urge government to continue diversifying our markets on coffee to easily manage such risks,” she said.
Namagembe further encouraged the government to promote value addition on the coffee in addition to emphasizing local consumption locally.
“That is part of increasing uptake but also consumption of the already available coffee,” she observed.
Meanwhile, the CSOs in their statement raised red flags over issues they think are not addressed in Uganda’s near Shs50.8trillion FY2023/24 budget.
Among these are; insufficient allocations for domestic arrears, high public expenditure, lack of standard price list, rising public debt stock, inadequate financing and understaffing of local governments.
Others are shortage of life saving blood, implementation gaps in the Parish development model, huge cuts towards gender interventions and social development.
“We call upon parliament to implore the Ministry of Public Service to fast-track the rationalization of MDAS to eliminate redundancies in the medium-term, reduce the cost of running government and improve efficiency in resource management,” Jeff Wadulo, the policy and program Advisor at CSBAG said on April 27.
