Museveni praises Mubarak's efforts to develop Africa
Egypt-Uganda, Politics, 6/1/2002

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni-praised President Hosni Mubarak's efforts to develop Africa.

Museveni during a seminar on investment and business opportunities in Uganda in Cairo, underlined the importance of setting up a major African market in order to push forward the development in the continent.

All African countries should increase their trade exchange and remove customs restrictions if they really want to get the continent out of its current economic crisis.

"The lack of qualified administrative cadres is one of the reasons behind the deteriorating economic situation in Africa," he added.

Regarding the council which Prime Minister Atef Ebeid suggested to set up with Uganda, he backed Ebeid's suggestion, saying men of state should also join this council.

He urged the Egyptian government to help Uganda set up dams to produce electricity.

Maggie Kigozi, Executive Director of the Uganda Investment Authority, made it clear that inflation rates in Uganda were brought down from 243 percent in 1990 to 4.6 percent in 2001.

She said that the Uganda Investment Authority aims at encouraging investment and setting up joint ventures in order to create job opportunities and overcome poverty. She added that most foreign investments in Uganda come from Britain then Canada.

"There are also some Egyptian investments in Uganda, including Cairo International Bank, Al-Safa and some projects by Arab contractors, but they are few.

She urged the foreign businessmen to come and invest in the mining, services, tourism, communications, agriculture, printing, publishing and packaging domains.

Mean where Prime Minister Dr. Atef Ebeid stressed on Thursday Egypt's commitment to partnership with Uganda in its trip for sustainable development.

Addressing a seminar on Investment and Business Opportunities in Uganda, Ebeid thanked Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for his continuous understanding and for reaching an agreement with Egypt on water resources.

Ebeid expressed President Hosni Mubarak's full support for pursuing efforts to deepen relations with Uganda in a way beneficial to both countries.

"We commit ourselves to care about the interests of Uganda as we care about the Egyptian ones," he said.

"Like many other countries, we suffered from September 11 events but we are recovering very fast because we are supporting the liberalization of markets, trade and investment," he said.

In this regard, he said Egypt has initialed a partnership agreement with Europe, adding that Egypt is working hard to sign a Free Trade agreement with the US.

He added that the government will continue to play an important role in order to create a favourable climate for foreign and local investments.

He also pledged that the government would continue investing in the areas which are not of attraction to the private sector, including providing health care for poor people and the establishment of dams, roads and canals.

We share with Uganda commitment to modernisation of financial sector and educational systems, he said. Education should be available to every child from age of six. But what we need most is training and development of sills.

We have heavily invested over the past ten years in setting up training centres.

But we also need to train the trainers and follow up the latest techniques in this regard.

He expressed regret that population growth rates are still constituting a major challenge to development.

What we can offer to the Ugandans is a long-term partnership. We are offering to the Ugandans the Egyptian market through which they can sell their products such as tea, coffee, tobacco and fish.

At the end, Ebeid proposed forming a council grouping Egyptian and Ugandan businessmen with the aim of identifying investment opportunities and taking appropriate decisions in this regard.

Previous Stories:
  Egyptian- Ugandan summit between Mubarak and Museveni   (5/31/2002)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search