Uganda to boost agriculture funding, Eyes 6% growth

Uganda to boost agriculture funding, Eyes 6% growth
03-08-2009

KAMPALA – Uganda is set to spend up to 2.5 trillion Ugandan shillings ($2.5 billion) on its agriculture sector in the next five years in a bid to boost production and exports, the minister of agriculture said over the weekend.

Hope Mwesigye said under the program, the ministry is targeting to boost the sector’s growth from the current 2.6% to 6% annually.

The program is targeting to increase production of crops such as cotton, bananas and cassavas, whose output has been dwindling over the years, due to high incidence of pests and diseases, changing weather patterns and volatile farm gate prices.

According to Mwesigye, Uganda also wants to boost production of food crops such as corn, rice, millet and sorghum as well as cash crops such as tea, coffee and cocoa to boost export earnings. Uganda is Africa’s second largest coffee producer after Ethiopia and the continent’s second largest organic cotton producer after Tanzania.

Government data indicates that 64% of the funds under the five-year project will be allocated to productivity programs while 23.7% will be used to improve market access in a bid to boost farmers incomes, with 3.9% spent for institutional strengthening and 7.8% will be used to create an enabling environment for the projects.

High yielding and disease resistant seedlings will be distributed across the country for the 2009 farming season of crops such as cotton and corn. Government is also expected to implement various irrigation projects in the northern and north eastern semi arid regions to end over reliance on natural rains.

The government plans to plant 20 million trees of high yielding coffee varieties every year until 2015 in a bid to restore coffee output to 4.5 million 60-kilogram bags, last recorded in the early 1990s.