By Frank Nyakairu
Nov 5, 2003 Monitor
| KAMPALA - President Yoweri Museveni told the United Nations General Assembly on Monday that Uganda is a big donor.
He said Uganda donates more than money to the developed world. "African countries including mine are big donors but they are donors in ignorance," Mr Museveni was quoted by the UN News Agency on Monday. He told a UN meeting in New York that African nations, especially Uganda, donate jobs and money in form of taxes to the richer countries. He said African nations can only stop donating to the rich if they can process their raw materials and add value to them through a "transformation" of their economies. He said Uganda gets about $1.30 for a kilogramme of raw cotton, "but if I do the spinning the value goes up three times. If you weave that cotton the value goes up six times. If you produce the garment the value goes up ten times," he said. "So if I export it as lint [cotton] I am a donor, I am a 'mega-donor.' I am donating three or four things. I am donating $9 or $10 out of every kilogram I export. I am donating it to the ones who are doing the value addition. I get one-tenth of the value of my product. I am a donor of money," he added. "Who will do the spinning, who will do the weaving? Somebody else. Who will do the tailoring? Somebody else. So we are donors of jobs. That's why there are no jobs in Uganda," he said. Museveni said that the lost jobs mean lost taxes, too, because the incomes are taxed. "Having work means taxes and having work means buying shampoo, which also would be taxed," he said. He said the price for raw materials will always go down, because of the changing demand, oversupply, and "because of the subsidies of the United States, Europe and Japan". He said one solution is diversification, but "the real answer is transformation". "Transform the economy, so that it becomes an economy that adds value to this raw material and goes and links with the consumer," he said. Such transformation, he said, would also aid the developed West since Africa, with 800 million people as potential customers, is a large "We have the stomach; we don't have the money. We don't have the money because there are no jobs. But remember the jobs were donated. If you donated a job, you don't have a job. If you don't have a job, you have no money. If you have no money you don't consume," he said. Museveni is on a one-week working visit in the United States. |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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