During the 42nd Tarehe Sista celebration, held on Monday 6th February at Kakyeka Mbarara under the theme “Recognizing the sacrifice of the founders of the Peoples Revolution for Social Economic Transformation,” H.E Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, while speaking, stated that the NRM implemented a correct strategy, enabling the country to achieve economic recovery.
“When we won power, again, the NRM put out a correct strategy which has achieved the following, minimum economic recovery, expansion of the small enclave economy of the 3Cs and 3Ts after it had recovered by 2005, diversifying it and now transforming the economy into one of knowledge and skills e.g. the automobile industry,” he said.
In order to further restructure the economy, the nation still has a lot of work to do, according to President Museveni. He listed nine tasks to complete total economic transformation:
- Fully monetize the economy by involving all families into commercial activities that is in agriculture, industry, services and ICT with “ekibaro.”
- Value addition to all our agricultural products that are not consumed fresh, raw-materials value addition to all our raw-materials will catapult our economy from the size of US$50billion to an economy of may be US$500billion, half a trillion.
- Irrigation for our agriculture to stabilize the food supply and the raw-materials sources.
- Continue to modernize and expand the economic infrastructure citing roads, the railway, electricity, piped water among others.
- Continue to expand and modernize the social infrastructure citing schools, health centres, stadiums among others.
- Resolutely and uncompromisingly to implement free education in Government schools (primary, secondary, tertiary) so that the children of the poor do not continue dropping out of school.
- Resolutely fight corruption so that the parasites are weeded out of the Public Service of Uganda
- Uncompromisingly defend the environment that was given to us by God and bequeathed to us by our ancestors against parasites who are enemies of our water sources.
- Working with our African brothers and sisters, deepen the regional integration of East Africa and the African continent.
The President urged Ugandans to be proactive and desist from corruption in order to achieve maximum economic recovery and growth.