Uganda’s export earnings increased by 16.6% in January 2025 compared with December 2024, official figures from the ministry of finance have shown.
The ministry’s performance of the economy report for February 2025 indicated that the export earnings in January amounted to $859.22 million, up from $736.81 million in December 2024.
“This growth was primarily driven by higher earnings from mineral products, coffee, electricity, tobacco, cotton, tea, flowers and maize, among others,” the report, which was released on Wednesday (March 19), said.
Similarly, exports excluding coffee and mineral products increased by 18.1% from $320.79 million to %378.87 million, signaling a rise in the majority of Uganda exports in January.
The report also said coffee export earnings increased for January by 36.1%, from $115.03 million to $156.50 million, primarily due to higher volumes of coffee exports during the month.
Italy remained the largest market for Uganda’s coffee exports, accounting for 36.9% of the total coffee exports in January.
While reading his budget speech for the financial year 2024/25, finance minister Matia Kasaija said efforts to increase value addition to exports had continued to yield positive results.
“Exports of manufactured products have continued to be significant contributors of export earnings,” he said.
Kasaija noted that in the last financial year of 2023/24, efforts to increase export performance were strengthened through investing in targeted value addition initiatives and implementing several enabling trade policies.
President Yoweri Museveni has on many occasions said that Uganda is going to be mainly an exporting country.
“Ugandans keep buying but we need to sell more. We need to eliminate the shame of importing things we can make locally here in Uganda. We earn $5b in exports of goods and services but import $700b of goods and services,” he said at a function in 2017.
He also said that Uganda’s economy remains raw materials-based, calling for the need to add value to all raw materials such as coffee, cotton, timber, cocoa, fish products, gold, iron ore, copper, vermiculite, phosphates, petrochemicals, maize, bananas, etc., and stopping to export them unprocessed.
“By doing this, our economy will jump to $550b instead of the mere $55.2b,” he said.
