From the guest author

There was good news for the economy in the first quarter of 2021. Not just Uganda, but with the whole world emerging from the Covid-19 chokehold, any good news makes a big difference and is a reason to wake up energetically to go to work and rebuild our Uganda.

The arrival of 864,000 doses of Covid vaccine on March 5th marked the start of the re-establishment of the ordering process. Uganda received 3.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the COVAX facility to Uganda for delivery between January and June. That’s about 20 percent of what Uganda needs, given the government’s burden of commercially sourcing 18 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

As a member of the Covid-19 vaccine advisory board, I felt honored to be able to take part in the introduction of the vaccination campaign. As a member of the committee and representative of the Ugandan private sector, I was privileged to be among the first five people to receive the vaccination. A few weeks later, I have had no adverse effects whatsoever, headache or arm pain, and am looking forward to my second shot.

The other good news was the Stanbic Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) report released in early April, which shows that Uganda’s economy is recovering and steadily returning to normal. The index is calculated from a monthly study by Stanbic Bank of a basket of 400 private companies and their activity within the month in the various sectors of agriculture, industry, construction, wholesale and retail.

The PMI measures five main components: incoming orders, production, employment, delivery times of suppliers and purchasing stocks. Values ​​above 50.0 indicate an improvement in business conditions compared to the previous month, while values ​​below 50.0 indicate a deterioration.
The March values ​​were 53.2 compared to 51.2 in February. The March readings are the highest since November 2020, when the PMI averaged 52.9.

Tourists have a good time in Uganda. The 6th edition of the Pearl of Africa Tourism Expo will take place from April 27th to 29th. PHOTOS | FILE

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The Stanbic PMI is in line with a similar study by the Bank of Uganda on business trend indicators, which was also 52.04, 18 points above the 33.97 measured in May 2020 – an all-time low since the central bank started to track the index in July 2012.
Both indicators signal a slow but steady recovery.

This good news was complemented by the Bank of Uganda’s Monetary Policy Statement, which stated that Uganda’s economic recovery is stronger than forecast at its last meeting in February.
On April 14, the central bank released its monetary policy statement and reported that Uganda’s economic recovery was stronger than forecast.

According to a statement, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) estimated in its updated quarterly GDP that real GDP would decline to 1.1 percent in 2020, below the original projections of around two percent. Economic growth in the quarter to December 2020 is expected to have accelerated by 1.6 percent year-on-year. This is a significant improvement over the revised contractions of 6.1 percent and 0.1 percent in the quarters through June 2020 and September 2020, respectively.
However, the education, hospitality and tourism sectors remain depressed.

The service sector is expected to shrink 2.6 percent in the quarter ended December 2020. As a result, the GDP growth outlook remains unchanged at 4.0 to 4.5 percent in fiscal year 2021/2022. Nevertheless, the recovery is expected to accelerate, especially as more Ugandans on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other are in favor of the Covid-19 vaccination.

That is why, as a key player in the tourism sector, I welcome the idea of ​​the Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) working with the Mother Ministry, Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiques (MTWA) and the private sector to start and host the 6th edition of the Pearl of Africa Tourism Expo, commonly known as POATE.

POATE is a business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) meeting of all actors in the tourism value chain such as travel and travel agencies, hosted buyers, hoteliers, airlines, etc. for the purpose of doing business.
The event will take place from April 27th to 29th under the theme “New start of tourism for regional economic development”

POATE 2021 will be different from all previous conferences. For the first time ever, the event will be hosted virtually, removing previous physical and spatial constraints that limited attendees. Perhaps more importantly, a virtual POATE corresponds to the current reality of digital tourism. More and more customers are relying on digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, etc. to both make travel decisions and close a sale.
The faster the Ugandan tourism industry wakes up with this reality, the faster it will be for our recovery.

I would therefore like to urge all of us, the players in the tourism industry, to adopt POATE 2021. Let’s all get this deal closed – it could make all the difference.
As the Simba group of companies, we are very committed to the recovery of the tourism industry, not only because we are deeply invested in it, but also because it is a bastion of hope for many Ugandan livelihoods.

For this reason, Protea Hotel recently entered into a partnership with the MasterCard Foundation and the Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU) to train and educate young women and young people in particular in gastronomy and local handicrafts, which are among the categories that are strongest affected by the unprecedented Covid -19 impact on the tourism sector.

Mr. Patrick Bitature is the founder, chairman and CEO of the Simba Group of Companies.

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