Uganda’s Mineral and Mining Sub-Sector: What can be done to harness its full potential?
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Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Budget Monitoring and Accountability Unit
Abstract
The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD), through the Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines is tasked with attracting investment in Uganda’s mineral sub-sector through mineral exploration, value addition and development. This is done by monitoring and enforcing regulation in all mining activities and also undertaking collection, collating, processing, analysis, archiving and dissemination of geo data to establish the mineral potential.
The contribution of minerals to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth increased from 0.3% in Financial Year (FY) 2012/13 to 0.6% in FY2017/18 which has also seen the value of mineral production increase from Ug shs 159.3bn in 2013 to Ug shs 179.7bn in 2017.
Uganda’s mineral deposits have a tremendous potential to cause economic growth and transformation, and contribute to GDP. In addition, the sub-sector can create employment since it employs about 26.5% of Uganda’s populationdirectly or indirectly.
This policy brief explores and assesses the effectiveness of what has been done to benefit from the mineral sub-sector, and what more needs to be done to exploit the mineral potential.