Cabinet headed by President Museveni has in a turn of events passed a resolution to scrap the three year transition period for Uganda Coffee Development Authority as had been agreed earlier.
In the National Coffee (Amendment) Bill, 2024 that is yet to be tabled before Parliament, government had accepted to give a three year transition period to UCDA before it is taken back to the Ministry of Agriculture.
However, cabinet sitting at Entebbe on Monday scrapped the transition period according to the government chief whip, Hamson Obua.
Obua said cabinet resolved that the National Coffee(Amendment) Bill 2024 be supported and passed into law without the three year transitional period.
Despite several dissenting voices from almost all over the country, President Museveni has maintained his stance on having UCDA merged.
Speaking during the thanksgiving for Energy Minister, Ruth Nankabirwa in Luweero on Saturday, Museveni further justified his move to rationalise what he referred to as parasitic government authorities and agencies.
He said that by rationalisation, the government will be able to save more money that would be channeled to other developmental programmes.
“Therefore, this standoff must stop. If you want your country to develop, the people you elect must work with the Head of government. We cannot have this permanent paralysis situation,” he urged.
“Another problem is URA. That one is part of the authorities actually. They are paid a lot of money. The theory is that if you bribe them with a lot of money, they work better; but they don’t. The more money you pay them, the more corrupt they become. That war we are also fighting.”
The president recently said the role of UCDA in boosting Uganda’s coffee exports is overrated.
If UCDA and NAADS were successful, why were 68% of the homesteads still outside the money economy by 2013? OWC did much more work than NAADS and UCDA and CDO combined.”
According to Museveni, in Masaka, Operation Wealth Creation has so far distributed over one million coffee seedlings and caused the planting of 38,666.6 acres of coffee.
