President Yoweri Museveni
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has said that Uganda is not involved in any secret deals to sell its recently discovered oil in the Albertaine region of Western Uganda because oil has not been drilled yet for commercial consumption.
In his State of the Union address at Uganda Parliament in Kampala today (June 2, 2010), the Ugandan president says, the oil revenues will not be mismanaged because, the Uganda government has already designed a national policy to help in the management of oil revenues and proper petroleum resource exploitation.
Museveni says, the oil resource management policy and oil revenue management policy will soon be operationalised.
The Uganda president adds, the oil will also be used to generate electricity to reduce the electricity costs and the power shortages the country currently faces due to few hydro-electric power dams and high costs of importing diesel to power thermal fuel plants.
He says Uganda’s petroleum sector has started benefitting small companies which is in line with the government policy of attracting and promoting small scale investment. Museveni says Uganda government has already licensed seventy five (75) small scale companies to operate in the oil sector.
Activists and opposition politicians have been accusing the government of making secret oil deals aimed at swindling and mismanaging Uganda’s oil wealth.