The Permanent Secretary and Secretary to Treasury (PSST) has asked government to forget about foreign travels in the name of benchmarking.
He said Uganda is already reach with what they are yarning to go benchmark in foreign countries especially in the area of agriculture.
On that note he thus said there is no need of government funding it’s officials like Members of Parliament go outside the country to benchmark yet they can do it here locally and comfortably.
“We have cut all that budget, no new cars, no allowances and benchmarking budgets. If they want for example in Agriculture let them come here in Gudie Lesuire Farm, across the country we have good farms that can be benchmarked upon,” he said
He made these remarks while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the business symposium that was organised by the Gudie Leisure Farm (GLF) at their headquarters in Kira, Wakiso district on Saturday.
Government, he said has in the FY2023/24 budget embarked on prioritizing areas that will directly impact the common people.
“We want to first ensure that all Ugandans especially the local citizens have money and that’s why we are investing in their areas of expertise like agriculture. In future when these people have money, we shall tax them and later increase our salaries as preferred by most government officials,” he said
GLF is a social enterprise that was established in January 2009, to transform African Agribusiness by empowering the continent’s vast human resource to set up agro-based enterprise that can competently grow.
It currently operates in 500 Parishes, 50 divisions in 28 districts across Uganda, offering a network of 112,900 micro and small enterprises.
Dr. Gudula Naiga Basaza, the founder and ED of GLF said that they aim at creating opportunities and training youths to engage and benefit from commercial agriculture.
“We do this through offering trainings, this place acts as an incubation centre we ensure that we have trained our youths properly,” she said
“We also help our trainees to digitalize their farms, ensure online presence because that’s is the way to go,” she added.
Dr. Gudula advised women to take a centre stage and be content creators, intensify online presence so that they are not left out.
GLF, she said is working closely with local and international partners in leveraging the tool of business to sustainably build a strong and we’ll coordinated supply chain networks of profitable youth owned agro-based enterprise in the white meat.
“These include; fish, poultry, piggery, and cunniculture value chain and closely related value chains including; cereals, oil seeds, tuber, hoticulture, so that they can, working in collaboration, efficiently respond to existing and emerging markets opportunities and also guarantee food, nutrition band social economic security for the society,” she said.
The symposium attracted numerous dignitaries from various parts of he country.
