The fourth National Development Plan (NDPIV) is expected to be ready in September this year, according to the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
This deadline is aimed at ensuring that the NDP IV informs the country’s macro-economic framework and budgeting processes for financial year 2025/26.
The NDPIII expires in June 2025, and its performance and achievements are expected to guide and impact on the NDP IV.
The strategic objectives of the NDP III were to enhance value addition in key growth opportunities, to strengthen the private sector capacity to drive growth and create jobs and others were, to consolidate and increase the stock and quality of productive infrastructure, to enhance the productivity and social wellbeing of the population, and to strengthen the role of the state in guiding and facilitating development.
The Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development hopes to avoid a repeat of the implementation of the NDP III, because it is likely not to achieve all its objectives.
The NDP IV is the fourth out of the six five-year National Development Plans that are meant to implement Uganda Vision 2040.
It is also the last plan to deliver the global agenda 2030 of the sustainable development goals and the first within the implementation of government’s strategy for achieving 10-fold growth.
The goal of NDP IV is to achieve higher household incomes and employment for sustainable socio-economic transformation. It is premised on the theme: “Sustainable industrialization for inclusive growth, employment and wealth creation.”
The strategic direction of NDP IV was approved by Cabinet in March 2024 and is in line with the strategy of growing the economy ten-fold from the current 50 billion as of FY 2023/24 to USD 500 billion in the next 15 years in a transformative, inclusive and sustainable manner, according to the ministry.
The implementation agenda has five strategic objectives through which the NDP IV is expected to be achieved, including sustainably increasing production, productivity and value addition in agriculture, minerals, oil and gas.
Others are tourism, communication technology, financial services, as well as enhancing human capital development and supporting the private sector to drive growth.
Building and maintaining strategic sustainable infrastructure and strengthening good governance, security and role of the state in development will be the other strategic objectives.
According to Ramathan Ggoobi, the Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury (PSST), NDP IV should be fiscally realistic.
“The introduction of Indicative Planning Figures (IPFs) is a step towards ensuring that the limited resources of government are used efficiently, safeguarding ongoing commitments and strategically taking on new priorities in line with the 10-fold growth strategy,” he said.
Some two major projects in the NDP IV will include the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) and the oil and gas projects.
The SGR project has been in plan since 2017 but financing challenges and differences between Uganda and Kenya over the implementation has delayed its implementation.
The PSST called for commitment to prudent and effective planning in this process of developing NDP IV, adding that there is need to ensure that development plans are based on availability of resources.
This will help guard against the pitfall of over ambitious projections and underfunded priorities.
Ggoobi encouraged the programme leaders to focus on developing detailed implementation action plans with clear resource allocations.