Preliminary remarks on cabinet reshuffle

Press statement

1. Eighty cabinet members: ministers (32) and ministers of state (48) is a luxury Uganda can’t afford. Administrative costs are going to eat deep into development funds leaving insufficient resources for development. The faces or names are the same. This is a cabinet that serves political and not development purposes.

2. To be effective and efficient ministers should be assigned to ministries for which they are qualified. Many of the ministers are qualified and experienced but are in wrong ministries, compromising their performance.

3. The Vice President should have been given a full ministry to engage him visibly and reduce size of the cabinet.

4. At a time when the economy is in trouble, an experienced economist in public and private partnership should have been among the top three. Two lawyers and a political economist or political scientist at the top is not the right mix.

5. Planning and economic development should have been split from finance in view of the Five Year National Development Plan (NDP), leaving finance to mobilize resources to fund the Plan. In the present setting planning is a junior partner to finance.

Preliminary remarks on cabinet reshuffle

Press statement

1. Eighty cabinet members: ministers (32) and ministers of state (48) is a luxury Uganda can’t afford. Administrative costs are going to eat deep into development funds leaving insufficient resources for development. The faces or names are the same. This is a cabinet that serves political and not development purposes.

2. To be effective and efficient ministers should be assigned to ministries for which they are qualified. Many of the ministers are qualified and experienced but are in wrong ministries, compromising their performance.

3. The Vice President should have been given a full ministry to engage him visibly and reduce size of the cabinet.

4. At a time when the economy is in trouble, an experienced economist in public and private partnership should have been among the top three. Two lawyers and a political economist or political scientist at the top is not the right mix.

5. Planning and economic development should have been split from finance in view of the Five Year National Development Plan (NDP), leaving finance to mobilize resources to fund the Plan. In the present setting planning is a junior partner to finance.

Post-London conference philosophy should be fundamentally different from NRM’s

NRM came to power at the height of the Washington Consensus ideology based on market forces, laissez-faire capitalism, economic deregulation, macroeconomic stability and trickle down mechanism, etc. Government was seen as part of the development problem and not the solution.

The Washington Consensus was declared over at the G20 Summit in London. Since then the economically troubled world with high unemployment and slow economic growth has been influenced largely by a return of Keynesian model of demand management. Governments have returned to stimulate the economy working strategically in partnership with the private sector and civil societies and addressing imperfections of the market mechanism including deregulation.

Although NRM government abandoned the Washington Consensus or Structural Adjustment in late 1997 and replaced it with a five-year development plan, implying an active but strategic role of the government in the economy, in practice the government has continued to implement many of the Washington Consensus elements.

Post-London conference philosophy should be fundamentally different from NRM’s

NRM came to power at the height of the Washington Consensus ideology based on market forces, laissez-faire capitalism, economic deregulation, macroeconomic stability and trickle down mechanism, etc. Government was seen as part of the development problem and not the solution.

In 1997 the Washington Consensus was declared over at the G20 Summit in London. Since then the economically troubled world with high unemployment and slow economic growth has been influenced largely by a return of Keynesian model of demand management. Governments have returned to stimulate the economy working strategically in partnership with the private sector and civil societies and addressing imperfections of the market mechanism including deregulation.

Although NRM government abandoned the Washington Consensus or Structural Adjustment in late 1997 and replaced it with a five-year development plan, implying an active but strategic role of the government in the economy, in practice the government has continued to implement many of the Washington Consensus elements.