Written by Paul Tentena | From East Africa Business Week

The number of licensed local investors with new projects in Uganda has dropped, according to the 2013 Uganda Investment abstract.

The abstract shows that the investments have gone down because local companies/investors are not obliged to obtain an investment license before starting their business or project.

“The domestic owned projects accounted for only 17.8% a drastic decline compared to the 39.4% registered in 2011/12.  The decline in the number of licensed domestic projects calls for more promotional efforts to urge domestic investors to acquire licenses since the value of domestic investment has since 2011/12 outstripped that of foreign investments,” Dr. Frank Ssebowa, the Uganda Investment Authority Executive Director, said last week.

However the abstract that was released recently, shows an increase in the number of foreign owned and jointly owned companies.

“Foreign owned enterprises continue to dominate in numbers accounting for 74.5% of the total projects licensed in 2012/2013 up from 40% in 2011/2012,” he said.

He said other benefits such as the ease in the acquisition of work permits from the UIA One Stop Centre have also attracted many foreign applicants for investment licenses.

He said efforts by UIA are underway to license more domestic investors and the trend is expected to improve in this financial year.

“In contrast, joint ventures accounted for 7.7% of the projects up from 7.2%. Majority of the ventures (52%) were dominated by foreign companies with local companies recording 48% of the ventures,” he said.

Read more at East Africa Business Week