President Yoweri Museveni has blamed the continuous persistent increase of prices of fuel on foreign factors. Fuel prices on a rare case shot from Shs4500 in December 2021 to a currently Shs5500 and continuously increasing. Speaking during the televised address on the state of the economy,
Museveni blamed this primarily on foreign factors which are beyond the country’s control.
“A litre of petrol before the rise of prices in November 2021, was Shs4,590 which meant $1.3 at that time. A litre of petrol is now Shs5,500 which means $1.48. This is all with the tax,” he said The president said that the more expensive litre of petrol (ey’obuseere), is doing two bad things: emptying the pockets of the consumers, “but also emptying our national dollar reserves,” “We now have $4.5 billion in our Reserves. These are enough to support imports for 4.2 months. If we subsidize or even just remove the taxes on imported commodities, the level of consumption will either remain the same, but this time each litre taking more dollars, or actually increase. The dollar drain will now increase per litre and also, worse, people may buy more of this expensive commodity,” he said
This, he said leaves the problem of petrol and diesel, products for which we do not have an easy local replacement until our own oil comes on stream in, 2025 with first production and the refinery expected in 2026 and we refine some of it for the final products.
“Even before the war in Ukraine, the price of fuel was going up, on account of the worry by the fossil fuels producers of the global movement for clean energy (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydropower, hydrogen, etc.),” he said
On account of that fear, Museveni said some petroleum companies were, apparently, no longer exploring new reserves. Yet, the new clean energies would take time to be available.
“The Russian-Ukrainian war has made it worse. Just before the Ukrainian war, the price of crude was $80 per barrel. It is now $114 per barrel. Therefore, the Ukrainian war has added another $34 per barrel. Of course, this is an artificial addition caused by the countries of the Global North (the Bazungu) mishandling their bilateral relations and also mishandling global affairs as well,” he said
“We are quietly engaging these actors to see how these actors can remove this artificial burden from the World. Nevertheless, this artificial distortion, should not divert us from our long-distance journey of achieving social-economic transformation because that is the only way of not only increasing our affluence but also immunizing ourselves against the mistakes of others,”
Inspite of being obstructed by some elements within Uganda that many times delay our programmes, Museveni said that the way they have been able to transcend the recent challenges of locusts, rising Lake Waters, Covid-19, etc., shows that we are moving towards that state of immunity from the mistakes of others.
“Even with the high commodity prices, we are still doing much better than many countries in the World. Our inflation has risen from 2.7% before the artificial crisis to 4.9% now. Compare this with other countries: UK 9%, USA 8.3%, France 4.8%, Germany 7.4%, Italy 6%, Spain 8.3%, Russia 17.8%, China 2.1%, Kenya 6.47%, Tanzania 3.8%, Rwanda 10.5% and Ghana 23.6%,” he said “With petrol, diesel and paraffin, the artificial crisis of the Bazungu has added another $34 dollars. We are engaging the involved actors on this. When we succeed here, we shall remain with the original reason of the fossil fuels being worried about the clean energy sources,” he said
“That will be much better than where we are now. It is important for Ugandans to know that even when we get our own petroleum, we cannot sell it below the World prices minus transport costs. I also hear, that some of the producers decided to turn their palm oil into petrol, just like we were about to turn our surplus sugar into petrol as a way of solving the problem of kyengera (surplus),” he added.
