Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | 

Uganda’s public debt has risen to 73.8 trillion shillings

(about 20.8 billion US dollars), according to provisional figures at the Bank of Uganda up to the
month of October 2021.

By the end of June 2021, the Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development reported
that the debt had gone up by more than a quarter to 69 trillion shillings (19.5 billion dollars) over the
previous year.

Now, the increase from the end of June to October last year was mainly attributed to the 5.9 trillion-
shilling debt that the government acquired from the domestic market. This means that currently, for
every one Ugandan, the government debt amounts to 1.53 million shillings, based on today’s
population estimates by global demographic centres. Macrotrends.net and Worldometers.info put
Uganda’s population at 48 million as of Thursday.

The ministry attributes this sharp rise in the national debt stock to the Covid-19 crisis, which it says
has exacerbated Uganda’s fiscal position and development needs.

The total external debt exposure (outstanding stock of disbursed debt and committed but not yet
disbursed debt) accounted for 62 percent of the total public debt in October 2021.

The outstanding stock of disbursed external debt amounted to 12.8 billion dollars, while that not yet
disbursed was 4.3 billion.

The increase in disbursed external debt was largely due to increased budget support inflows from
multilateral creditors. These were particularly the World Bank’s International Development
Association, IDA, whose total outstanding debt to Uganda is now 4.5 billion, and the African
Development Fund, (ADF), as well as project support inflows mainly from African Export-Import
Bank.