IS THE ECONOMY LOSING MOMENTUM?

Last week the World Bank released its annual Ease of Doing Business survey and Uganda had dropped five places to 127 out of the 190 economies surveyed.

It is common sense that for businessmen to operate or thrive in an economy certain things have to be in place like macroeconomic stability, predictable policy environment, an efficient bureaucracy, usable infrastructure and  quality human resource.

The World Bank annually goes around measuring these and other metrics to determine whether a country’s environment is suited to doing business.

Being who they are, their judgement on a country’s economy is carries some weight in many circles.

The story is told of how MTN happy playing second fiddle to Vodafone in South Africa, had to convinced to invest in Uganda because the official reports on the economy  -- we had a per capita GDP at the time of just under $300, did not reflect the suppressed demand for everything from phone services to electricity.

When they finally made their way here --- not kicking and screaming, they were pleasantly surprised to an economy more than ready for mobile phone services.

"So while you are advised not to take all the World Bank and other donor agencies at face value there are certain fundamentals that cannot be ignored...

So say you are investor with billions of shillings to spare, rather to invest and you decide to take a punt at Uganda.

When your assistant plops the report on your desk, you decide it’s really not much to look at.

I mean they have a GDP of $25b, which can fit in a corner of Boston; an urban population of under 10 million, little industry and not enough energy to power a city in the US. Nothing really jumps out at you.

Maybe they are in advanced stages of forging an East African federation of about 140 million people, with an urban population of 40 million.

In the country’s lack there is opportunities to be had all over the place of course.

Maybe you could be involved in power generation, the potential on the River Nile of about 4000 MW has barely been tapped. Or maybe you could get involved in the hotel business, they barely have 5,000 beds. Or maybe you could dabble in agriculture, produce beef say? Can you believe they only produce 107,000 tonnes of beef annually. Texas alone produces at least $10b worth of beef annually – or about half the size of Uganda economy.

But somehow you find yourself at the carousel at Entebbe Airport one morning, watching it going around and around, waiting for your luggage. Just when you think it may be lost or stolen (you have heard such stories about Africa) it pops out and you are off to see what Uganda has to offer.

It helps that you can hail an Uber at the airport. It helps too that you can get to your air conditioned hotel room in under an hour, though half the time was spent in traffic after you exited the swanky new expressway to your hotel. It helps too that they have clean, bot overpriced hotel rooms and the food is recognisable to your palate.

You decided to hit the ground running with a series of meetings in the afternoon but no one is on time or meetings have been shifted around or worse cancelled.

To fill up the time you try to ask around, investigate how long it takes to get anything going and you realise your three day stay ( you were worried about the mosquitos) will be embarrassingly  less than adequate to get anything done.

The facilitating agencies and associations you are used to at home are clueless or non-existent altogether. No one really knows what works and can explain it to you in a way you can understand for consumption by your business managers.

Potential is all around you can tell, but little evidence of the facilitators to unlock this energy.

How many opportunities for this country have gone begging because we can’t keep time? That is before you realise you cannot get any actionable information from anyone and this is even before someone has tried to shake you down.

Many years ago I visited Mauritius and was shocked that everyone wanted to help me with directions. It was obvious I was a visitor, my colour of course. My impression was that everyone was wired to make visitors comfortable because tourism is a big thing on that small island of four million. They have 300 five start hotels – real five star hotels!

"The point is, the attraction and retention of investment – local or foreign,  is not the job of one agency or another. It has to be a collective effort. And if your agencies work in silos like they do here, it will show straight from the airport carousel....

So the World Bank ease of doing business, its shortcomings notwithstanding, is a measure of how coordinated as a country you are to helping business along and we are not only talking foreign investors.