Musasizi calls for pension reforms to protect retirement incomes

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Many employees plan to pursue additional income-generating activities after retirement. However, economic experts warn that putting all retirement savings into a single business can be risky, as there is no guarantee that the venture will succeed.

Finance minister Henry Musasizi has discouraged pensioners from investing all their retirement money in a single venture, urging them to consider ways of maintaining a steady income after leaving employment.

According to Musasizi, people can enjoy a more secure retirement if they retain what he termed “replacement income”.

“You remain on salary, yet you are not working. But when you are given all your money, then you go to Iganga to establish a maize mill, yet you have no experience in such a business. Six months down the road, you are poor again,” explained Musasizi.

Musasizi also cautioned pensioners against putting their lump-sum payments into ventures without adequate safeguards.

“You get your pension lump sum and say, 'oh, this money, I think I can win a  constituency somewhere'. You take it to your municipality; they eat the money and no vote. You become poor in your retirement.”

To help pensioners preserve their investments, Musasizi proposed a mechanism through which people who retire, for example at the age of 60, could continue earning income from their investments for another 15 years.

From left to right: Japheth Katto, founding Chief Executive Officer, Saul Sseremba, Chairperson of Board of Directors at Capital Markets Authority, Henry Musasizi, Finance minister, Josephine Okui Ossiya, CMA Chief Executive Officer during the launch of Capital Markets Authority 30th Anniversary celebrations at Uganda Media Centre in Kampala on 1ST September 2026. Photo by Juliet Kasirye

Working with the technical team at the Ministry of Finance and the Capital Markets Authority, Musasizi said it was time to rethink and explore ways of reforming the pension sector so that it responds to the realities of the current environment.

He made the remarks during the launch of the Capital Markets Authority's 30th anniversary celebrations at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala on September 1, 2026.

The Capital Markets Awards and main anniversary celebration, marking three decades of developing, promoting and regulating Uganda's capital markets, will be held at Kampala Serena Hotel on October 8, 2026.

The anniversary will be held under the theme, “CMA@30: Reimagining Uganda’s Capital Markets for a Sustainable Future.”

Over the past 30 years, the authority has built the regulatory and institutional foundations of Uganda's capital markets, supported the mobilisation of long-term capital, regulated and developed market intermediaries, and protected investors.

Under the Tenfold Growth Strategy, Musasizi said the Government had set an ambitious objective of transforming Uganda into a $500 billion economy by 2040.

Because Uganda is pursuing an ambitious economic transformation agenda, Musasizi said: “Achieving that ambition will require us to mobilise every available source of capital and deploy it productively. Our capital markets must therefore become a powerful engine of that transformation.”

Achievements of capital markets

Addressing journalists, the chief executive officer of the Capital Markets Authority, Josephine Okui Ossiya, said Uganda's capital markets had grown significantly over the past 30 years.

For instance, she said public understanding of capital markets had risen to 60.8 percent, while more than 220,000 Ugandans held funded Collective Investment Scheme accounts. In addition, 235,000 investors had maintained Securities Central Depository accounts.

“Segregated fund assets had grown to more than sh6 trillion. Domestic market capitalisation on the Uganda Securities Exchange had surpassed sh15 trillion. Assets under management in our Collective Investment Schemes have grown to sh7.06 trillion, and total funds mobilised through the capital markets have reached sh23.4 trillion,” revealed Ossiya.

The chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Capital Markets Authority, Saul Sseremba, said that although the authority had made tremendous achievements, participation by retail investors, while growing, still fell short of what a market of Uganda's size and ambition should support.

According to Sseremba, these were not failures to be hidden but an honest measure of how much work remained. He said the anniversary coincided with the implementation of the authority's new Strategic Plan for the period 2025/26 to 2029/30, whose goal was to establish and regulate a vibrant, orderly, fair and efficient capital markets industry in Uganda.

To increase investment, Sseremba said: “We will facilitate the mobilisation of long-term capital, deepening the pool of financing available for key growth sectors of our economy. Besides that, we will increase stakeholder awareness and automate processes for operational efficiency and service excellence, so that transactions in this market are fast, transparent and reliable.”