Uganda’s Finance Minister Henry Musasizi has used his first top management meeting with senior officials at the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development to set out the priorities that will define his tenure, centred on five pillars he says will move the country from “incremental growth to exponential economic take-off.”
Musasizi shared the agenda with the ministry’s top management team as he begins executing his mandate following his elevation to the post in May, when President Yoweri Museveni reshuffled his Cabinet for the 2026-2031 term and replaced long-serving finance minister Matia Kasaija, who had held the docket for 11 years. Musasizi, a certified public accountant and Rubanda County East MP, had served since 2021 as minister of state for finance in charge of general duties, where he oversaw budget implementation, debt management and fiscal transfers to local governments, before his promotion to the full Cabinet position.
At the centre of his agenda is Uganda’s target of building a $500 billion economy. “We shall relentlessly execute the tenfold growth strategy to turn Uganda into a 500 billion-dollar-economy,” Musasizi told the meeting, referencing the government’s broader push to roughly double the size of the economy every five years on the way to that target by 2040.
The minister said he intends to overhaul the culture inside his own ministry as a second pillar of his agenda. “We shall shift the Ministry culture from spending money to enforcing results,” he said, adding that he would demand strict budget discipline, push aggressive procurement reforms and require rigorous value-for-money audits on public projects.
A third pillar centres on revenue mobilisation. Musasizi said the ministry would implement its second domestic revenue mobilisation strategy with the aim of raising Uganda’s revenue-to-GDP ratio to at least 20%, reducing the country’s reliance on external borrowing — a priority that comes as Uganda’s public debt stood at roughly 48.4% of GDP by June 2026.
The fourth pillar ties his ministry’s work to President Museveni’s wealth creation agenda. Musasizi said the ministry will prioritise funding and tracking the commercialisation of smallholder farmers, with the goal of bringing every Ugandan into the money economy.
The fifth pillar addresses Uganda’s emerging oil sector. “We shall manage our impending oil revenues with bulletproof institutional guardrails,” Musasizi said, adding that oil revenue would be channelled into infrastructure development. He said the objective is for Uganda to become an oil producer without becoming an oil-dependent economy.
Musasizi delivered Uganda’s national budget for the 2026/27 financial year on 11 June, projecting growth of 10.2% — the country’s fastest pace in decades — driven in large part by the start of commercial oil production. Analysts have said his tenure begins at a demanding moment for Uganda’s public finances, with the ministry needing to expand the tax base without undermining private sector growth, manage elevated public debt, and ensure government programmes are funded on schedule.
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