WHO WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT OF UGANDA?

In the last week Presidential aspirant Robert Kyagulanyi has done the smart thing to get himself a spokesperson. In my mind this is a serious declaration of intent.

But in the last week too I have been working on a project that looks back to the eighties and how governments have been planning for the country. My conclusion is that no one can pay me enough to be the president of this country of ours.

"This country faces many challenges but top of the list has to be translating economic growth into improved livelihoods for all Ugandans...

Economic growth is a given in this country. The economy has been growing consistently since 1985 when there was last a contraction in the economy. In that year the economy contracted by 3.3 percent.

Most people think that in order to improve service delivery we need to contain corruption. Which makes sense. Corruption not only deprives people of proper services but has the dual effect of concentrating resources in fewer and fewer hands, aggravating the issue of the wealth and income inequalities.

The Auditor General recently reported that as much sh485b went unaccounted for – a euphemism for stolen, from the government coffers. If that money was used to lay roads, it would tarmac more than 100 kms of road at a million dollars or sh4b a kilometer. Opening up a road, leave alone tarmacking one, has huge economic ripple effects allowing access to markets for both producers and suppliers.

But looked at against the bigger picture of a sh32trillion budget, the Auditor General’s figure accounts for 1.5 percent of the budget. Seen in this light one wonders whether corruption is the real problem in service delivery. Of course it is possible the Auditor General did not capture the full extent of the “eating” in government, so let us double the figure, triple it even and you are not yet at five percent of the budget.

One can argue too that the amount that is eaten even if it’s not a major part of the budget maybe funds for key components of the budget without which everything grinds to a halt. That’s fair.

"Corruption – using a person’s position for private gain illegally, should not be condoned at all but given the figures, one begins to wonder...

But as earlier stated the national budget this year was sh32trillion or in simpler terms the government ear marked sh800,000 to spend on every Ugandan in this financial year. This was supposed to take care of everything – security, roads, power generation, education, health etc etc. of this amount half of it or sh400,000 went to servicing debt, so effectively the government planned to spend sh400,000 per Ugandan for the whole year.

If it hasn’t struck you yet, imagine living on sh400,000 a year or about a thousand shillings  or about $29 cents a day?

Finland spends the equivalent of sh40m per year on its citizens, Norway sh107m and even neighbours South Africa earmark sh77m per citizen annually.

Rational governments in this position can do one of two things. Either reduce on the people it is servicing – cut UPE, shut down free health care and rationalise police stations to serve the tax payers and ignore the rest; Or they can push for higher tax collections by charging higher taxes or roping in more people in the tax paying bracket.

That is why the question, Who wants to be the president of Uganda?

To be the president of Uganda you have to promise an improvement in living standards. Given the pitiful purse we now have that is not going to happen soon.

"In a democracy where you have to lean towards populism to win the vote, a campaign based on scaling back government programs will be a losing strategy, as will a campaign based on taxing more and more people – as it stands now only about two million of the 11 million workforce pay taxes on their incomes....

If I harbored presidential ambitions I would be agitating for government to widen the tax base, effectively put them under pressure to collect more taxes. I would achieve two things with this strategy, one, the government would become more unpopular – who wants to pay taxes and two, they would have done the heavy lifting for me, so that when I take over I can use the expanded treasury to improve service delivery.

QED!