The Permanent Secretary/ Secretary to the Treasury, Ministry of Finance, Planning and
Economic Development, Mr. Ramathan Ggoobi has met with the Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ambassador Zhang Xiangchen at the WTO Headquarters.
Mr. Ggoobi, who was on a 2-day working visit to Geneva, was accompanied to the meeting by Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Amb. Arthur Kafeero, Mr. Joseph Enyimu, Commissioner Economic Development, Policy and Research, and Mr. Moses Kabanda, Commissioner Public administration in the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
Mr. Ggoobi expressed gratitude to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for its continuous support to Uganda and highlighted the important role of trade and development for Uganda and other developing countries.
He briefed the DDG on Uganda’s 10-fold growth strategy anchored on the pillars of Agro-processing, Tourism, Mineral Resource development and Science and technology transfer and creative economies.
He added that his engagement with the WTO was to see how the organization can be a strategic partners in realizing the goal.
He welcomed the support Uganda was receiving under the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF), in building institutional capacity for trade; diagnostics; and productive capacity development including in the tourism sector,
As a land linked country, he said Uganda has a favorable trade balance in the region and sees great potential in Intra-African trade offering greater scope to support economic diversification and export stabilization, but non-tariff barriers remained an obstacle.
Uganda was interested in deeper economic integration and access to larger markets for its products and was open to working with WTO to leverage trade for growth, job creation and sustainable development.
Mr. Ggoobi and the DDG held a vibrant discussion on the green transition as well as the importance of Digital Trade for Uganda, acknowledging the need to address the digital infrastructure gap, including limited internet access and high costs, especially in rural areas.
Deputy Director-General Zhang applauded Uganda on her path to achieving her development goals through digital transformation and for the ambitious target of the 10- fold growth strategy by 2040 the current DGP. He emphasized the importance of e- commerce and digital transformation as key elements to achieving such exponential ambition.
They agreed that Uganda and WTO explore opportunities to support Uganda develop an IT ecosystem for the country share fully in the benefits that digital trade brings.
Zhang said that in view of the demographics of Uganda with a high percentage of youth, there is great potential in encouraging and developing a creative economy, citing examples from his own country of origin, China that to date relies heavily on creativity and digitalization, not only in basic Information Technologies, but embedding AI into critical sectors like Agriculture.
Mr. Zhang reiterated the readiness of WTO to work with Uganda.
The ten-fold growth strategy aims to focus on key areas of agro-processing, tourism, mineral resource development, and science and technology transfer and creative economies to transform Uganda.
