KAMPALA – Speaker Rebecca Kadaga has summoned the Prime Minister, Ruhakana Rugunda to update Parliament on the progress of the pledges made by Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi during his visit to Uganda in 2018.
The summons followed a question raised by Robert Ntende (Bunya South) who asked in Tuesday’s plenary sitting inquiring how far the Indian Government had gone to fulfill the pledge PM Modi made during his recent visit to Uganda.
The pledges included the construction of a heritage center in Jinja and credit grants worth US Dollars 141 million.
“While he was here, there are a number of pledges he made to this nation. We actually applauded him and all he had carried with him and one of them was to build a heritage centre in Jinja in memory of a great man called Ghandi. The other issue was credit grants to this nation amounting to USD141m and he pledged that this credit would go in line with establishing cottage factories in sub-regions and the President committed to following up on these important matters. But this is a year now that as a country and our people have been waiting to see what the Prime Minister of India promised,” said Hon Ntende.
In her response, Mary Karooro, Minister of State in charge of General Duties promised to do a follow-up and report back to Parliament.
She noted, “Indeed we were very happy and indebted when the Prime Minister made those commitments. We have lost time but I am going to inform the leader of government business so that a follow up is made and the report is made is available here verbally.”
It should be recalled that Modi took a two-day state visit to Uganda in July 2018 and during his visit, he made a number of pledges to Uganda among which included; two-line credit for construction of lines and substation worth USD141M and agriculture and diary production worth USD64Milluion, construction of Mahatma Gandhi convention.
The Indian Prime Minister also pledged financial support of US$929,705 for capacity building and creating a supportive infrastructure for East Africa that was chaired by Uganda, as well as 25 slots for training in the field of diary cooperation in order to strengthen the diary sector.
The Indian Government pledged to gift Uganda with 88 vehicles 44 of which were to go to UPDF and the other for civil service use for the government and further pledged to gift Uganda with a cancer therapy machines to assist Uganda’s efforts towards eradicating the malaise of cancer, gifting 100,000 books to school-going children in Uganda as well as 100 solar power irrigation pumps to Uganda for helping efforts in the development of agriculture.