We’ve built firm ground to hit $500b economy target—PS Ggoobi
“The ministry is actively pursuing the implementation of the $500 billion tenfold growth strategy. There is good news: the ground we build on is firm,” he said on Friday (September 25) while speaking at the 17th National Competitiveness Forum at Serena Hotel in Kampala.
Finance Ministry Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury (PSST) Dr. Ramadhan Ggoobi. (Courtesy photo)
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Finance Ministry Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury (PSST) Dr Ramadhan Ggoobi has said they have built a firm ground to meet the Government’s $500 billion economy target by 2040.
“The ministry is actively pursuing the implementation of the $500 billion tenfold growth strategy. There is good news: the ground we build on is firm,” he said on Friday (September 25) while speaking at the 17th National Competitiveness Forum at Serena Hotel in Kampala.
The forum, which was organised by the Ministry of Finance, focused on the theme: “From Funds to Firms: Turning GoU Wealth Creation Enterprises into Competitive Firms for Uganda’s US$500 Billion Economy”.
Ggoobi noted that the economy grew by an estimated 6.4% in the financial year 2025/26, up from 6.3% the year before, reaching about $69.3 billion by the end of June 2026.
“The external sector is also on an upward trend. Exports of goods and services have more than tripled in four years, rising by about 229% from $5.6 billion in the twelve months to June 2022 to $18.4 billion in the twelve months to June 2026,” he said.
He stated that gold and coffee account for roughly 70%, and “this has to change if we are to achieve our growth trajectory”.
Ggoobi also said that through the Parish Development Model (PDM) programme, they have transferred sh4.4 trillion to 10,589 parishes, reaching over 4 million beneficiaries by the end of June 2026.
Emyooga has been capitalised with sh760 billion across 7,148 Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations with more than 2.48 million members.
The permanent secretary also told the forum that the demand side is driven by the Economic and Commercial Diplomacy Strategy with clear performance targets on four measurable outcomes: tourism marketing, trade promotion, investment attraction, and diaspora mobilisation.
“The orders generated must be fulfilled on time, at the required scale, speed, standards, and sustainability.”
Ggoobi, however, noted that whereas Uganda’s export performance is growing, the firms still fall short of their potential due to fragmented supply, post-harvest losses and limited value addition, among other things.
“The Government has made an enormous public investment upstream, in production. The next step is to ensure that our wealth creation programmes produce viable, competitive firms that can carry that output to market.”
The four anchor sectors of the 10-fold growth strategy are agro-industrialisation, tourism development, mineral development (including gas and oil), as well as science, technology and innovation
Establishing new scheme
Ggoobi asked the forum two questions, which he said were practical and urgent.
“How does the Government turn scattered parish-level production into export-ready volume backed by credible firms? Do we have viable PDM Enterprises to feed the quantities for export orders?”
He said the Government’s considered position is that the answer to this is a structured aggregation mechanism: a value-chain approach using aggregators that deliberately links farmers, traders, processors, and cooperatives into mutually beneficial commercial relationships, with clear institutional linkages.
“To deliver this, the ministry is establishing the Export Aggregators Network and Delivery Scheme. This is a government-led and private-sector-driven machinery to address the missing middle: with a credible firm standing between the household we have financed and the buyer our missions have found.”
He also said their objective must not be to create enterprises that merely survive, but to build firms that grow and scale. “Competitive firms keep proper records, comply with tax and regulatory requirements, maintain standards, adopt technology, manage contracts, and enter markets repeatedly.”
He promised that the Government will provide the enabling environment, catalytic finance, infrastructure, standards support, and market access. “But the Government cannot substitute for entrepreneurship. The private sector must invest, innovate, improve productivity, manage risk, build brands, and compete,” Ggoobi said.
What others said
Opening the forum, finance minister Henry Musasizi said Uganda has significant opportunities given the abundant natural resources they have that form a firm basis for industrialisation and business growth.
He said they need to focus on transformative interventions to fully monetise the economy, scale up formalisation of businesses, and improve further the business environment, and ensure discipline in the public sector, the private sector, and among entrepreneurs.
The minister also said they need to prudently manage public resources and ensure accountability and value-for-money, maintain sound economic policies to attract private capital and modern technologies, and build strong partnerships with private sector entrepreneurs, financiers, and innovators.
“We must harness the existing trade arrangements in the region, including the East African Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa for our business growth, and take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement that gives Uganda an opportunity to reach new and bigger markets,” he added.
The forum was a public-private sector dialogue platform aimed at communicating the national competitiveness agenda, assessing the extent to which Government has fulfilled private sector aspirations and generating inputs for the national annual budget process.