Uganda Loses Shs 155bn in Export Revenue as Coffee Prices Tumble

Plummeting Coffee prices contributed greatly to Uganda’s loss of up to Shs 155bn ($41.1m) between February and March 2020.

In all, export revenue dropped by 11%.

Uganda’s exports dropped from Shs 1.3trillion ($357.1m) in February to Shs 1.1 trillion ($315.5m) in March 2020, according to the report titled: Performance of the Economy, which was released by the Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development this week.

The report reveals that Uganda’s leading exports like coffee drastically dropped by 1.8% in that period.

Coffee export revenue dropped to Shs 1.74bn ($45.9m) in March compared to Shs 1.77bn ($46.7m) in February, in spite of the increase in volume of coffee exported from 472,994 (60kg bags) exported in February to 477,561 (60kg bags) in March.

“Coffee’s decline was due to reduction in its unit price. The reduction in export volumes rose from trade disruptions amid coronavirus pandemic outbreak,” reads part of the report.

This affected the 34% export growth that the cash crop had registered between March 2019 to February 2020.

Non-coffee exports were also affected by the pandemic, experiencing a drop of 15% from $257.9m in February to $218.1% in March, indicating a loss of $39.8m.

Other products that experienced a drop were; Tea (from $5.9m to $5.2m), cotton (from $7m to $4.6m), maize (from $10.9m to $7.8m), simsim (from $6.2m to 5.5m) and flowers (from $5.4m to 3.2m).

Fish however registered an increase of 2.6% from $11.3m in February to $11.6m in March.

Imports

Meanwhile, the value of imports also declined by 10% from $548.2m in February to $492.2m in March, due to a decline in the private sector imports which was largely caused by the pandemic and the government lockdown which was aimed at fighting it.

The private sector imports reduced by 13% in a month, with reductions registered for commodities like; machinery equipment, vehicles, accessories, base metals, textile products and petroleum products.

Government between March and April, collected  only Shs 965.8bn, out of the set target of Shs 1.75 trillion in April 2020, but spent over Shs 2trillions, which led to an overall fiscal deficit of Shs 1.03 trillion.