Africa-Press – Uganda. Data from Ministry of Finance indicates that only 15 percent of the planned borrowing from World Bank and African Development Bank (AfDB) for the 2022/23 financial year has been disbursed, just a few months to the end of the financial year.
In details contained in the Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy, the Ministry of Finance noted that disbursements under multilateral lending, dominated by International Development Association, the lending arm of the World Bank and AfDB, remained low compared to other sources of debt.
For instance, the report noted, outstanding stock of borrowing from the International Development Association stood at $4.41b while that of AfDB stood at $1.50b as of December 2022.
The report further indicates that 40 percent of the planned borrowing from concessional sources had been disbursed while only 10 percent from semi-concessional borrowers had been disbursed.
Disbursement under commercial borrowing, the report indicates, stood at only 9 percent semi commercial fixed borrowing stood at 57 percent. Disbursements under semi commercial variable borrowing stood 49 percent.
Ministry of Finance indicated that the low performance, which averaged at 36.2 percent, was due to delayed disbursement in Standard Chartered Bank budget support and IMF Extended Credit Facility loans and rejection of expensive bids in the domestic market during the first half of the 2022/23 financial year that had sought to curb the cost of debt.
This, therefore, resulted in underperformance in domestic debt issuance during the first half of the 2022/23.
The outstanding stock of bilateral debt also remained high dominated by Exim Bank of China at $2.66b, followed by UK with an outstanding stock of $0.31b.
Debt from private banks is also performing under target with Trade Development Bank dominated hold an outstanding stock of $0.47b while Afrexim had an outstanding stock of $0.38b as of December 2022.
The share of bilateral debt in the external debt portfolio increased to 28.03 percent ($3.6b) as of December 2022 from 27.59 percent ($3.56b) in December 2021, while the share of multilateral debt stock increased from 61.19 percent ($7.89b) to 62.08 percent ($7.98b).
On the other hand, the share of private creditors in the external debt portfolio reduced from 11.2 percent ($1.45b) to 9.89 percent ($1.27b).
The Ministry of Finance further noted that domestic revenue excluding grants as a percentage of gross domestic product is projected to remain stable at 13.9 percent in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years.
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