Uganda claims to be in talks with the IMF about a fresh loan round
A senior official from Uganda’s finance ministry announced on Tuesday that the country is in discussions for a new round of funding with the International Monetary Fund, following the expiration of a previous agreement last year.
The East African country’s earlier Extended Credit Facility, initiated in 2021 and valued at approximately $1 billion, concluded last year with only around $870 million of the program’s funding being allocated.
Ramathan Ggoobi, the permanent secretary of the ministry of finance and secretary to the Treasury, informed a gathering of ambassadors that Uganda is in the process of negotiating a new Extended Credit Facility Program with the IMF, as stated in a ministry of finance post on the X platform.
According to the post, Ggoobi informed the officials that “the new program is expected to be presented to the IMF Board after the general elections early next year 2026.”
The national electoral body has announced that Uganda is set to conduct presidential and parliamentary elections in January or February of the upcoming year. The final date has not yet been determined.
Uganda is keen to finalize a new funding program with the IMF as it seeks to identify new avenues for affordable financing to help mitigate the escalation of its already substantial public debt.
The total public debt of the country increased by 17.8% last year, reaching $29.1 billion. The debt stock, as a percentage of GDP, rose to 52.1% at the end of 2024, up from 49.9% in the prior period, as reported by the ministry of finance.
The IMF announced that the previous program would expire in September 2024, stating that the funding round had lapsed “against the backdrop of program implementation challenges compounded by external funding constraints.”
