An Assessment of the Investment Climate in Uganda

The goal of the Investment Climate
Assessment (ICA) of Uganda is to evaluate the investment
climate in Uganda in all its operational dimensions and to
promote policies to strengthen the private sector and
encourage broad-based economic growth. Sustained
improvements in living standards depend on broad-based
growth. Growth will only occur, however, if firms improve
their productivity by investing in human and physical
capital and by increasing their technological capacity. But
firms will only do this when the investment climate is
favorable. Throughout the report, Uganda's investment
climate is compared to the investment climates of three
groups of countries: 1) nearby countries in East Africa
(Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi); 2) middle-income
countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that have successfully
diversified out of primary production into other sectors
(Mauritius, South Africa and Swaziland); and 3) several fast
growing countries in East Asia that have also successfully
diversified out of primary production into export-oriented
manufacturing (China, Malaysia, and Thailand). Finally,
infrastructure appears to be a more serious problem for
microenterprises than for Small, Medium-sized or Large
Enterprise (SMLEs). Although the differences in the number
of outages and losses during transportation between
registered microenterprises, unregistered microenterprises,
and SMLEs were small and statistically insignificant, access
does appear to be a more serious problem for microenterprises.