Government advised on Uganda Development Corporation

By Billy Rwothungeyo                                                                    

Ambassador Nathan Irumba, the Executive Director of the Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiation Institute (SEATINI) has advised government on efforts to make the “born-again” Uganda Development Corporation (UDC) effective and efficient.

“Government should ensure that that UDC is properly capitalized and staffed—not with cadres, but with people who understand how an economy works,” he said recently on the sidelines of a stakeholder consultative meeting on investments in Kampala.

The corporation, an investment arm of government, was first introduced by the UDC Act of 1952.

It was the main driver of state owned businesses enterprises and was hugely successful in the 1960s.

Managing thriving enterprises such as NYTIL in Jinja and Uganda hotels, many countries sent representatives to benchmark from Uganda.

“Countries used to come and study how successful UDC was as an investment arm of government,” says Irumba, a former envoy of Uganda to the World Trade Organisation.

One of the famous people who visited Uganda during this time and took a leaf off the success story of UDC is the now celebrated Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first prime minister.

However, UDC‘s fortunes nosedived with the economic and political turmoil of the 1970s.

The final nail in UDC’s coffin was when the liberalization wave caught up with the stuttering corporation in the 1990s.

The UDC Act was formally repealed in 1998.

While UDC struggled, the models learnt from the corporation by countries such as Singapore helped them thrive.

According to the World Bank, Uganda’s GDP stood at $571.96 in 2013, while Singapore’s was at $55,182.48 at the same period.

The government decided in the recent few years has been plotting the reviving of the corporation, which culminated in the passing of the approved the Uganda Development Corporation Bill 2014.