Principal Lenders to Uganda

Abstract

This report provides a summary of public debt of Uganda specifically focusing on its external debt. A similar but limited search for Kenya is also presented as comparison. The types of lending products in terms of loan, grant, technical assistance and loan guarantees; the financial terms of these products (interest rates, tenors, grace periods, applicable commitment and service fees and non-financial terms available are presented). As a country comparison, external borrowing of Kenya is also covered in a similar but limited approach. Public Debt of Uganda is presented in Section 2 in terms of domestic and external financing in different lending products. Section 3 represents the search for external lending in terms of available data provided by the lenders websites. For Uganda, WBG (40% of total debt stock) and AfDB (16% of total debt stock) are the main multilateral lenders whereas China (25% of total debt stock) and Japan (4% of total debt stock) bilateral credits are analysed as the bilateral lenders. The current active loans with project names, available financial terms and non-financial terms are presented in this section. Section 4 covers the external lending figures of Kenya in a similar but a limited approach. As these lenders are providing similar financial and non-financial terms applicable to these countries, the general characteristics of the loan terms provided to Kenya is like the ones in Uganda. Due to the specific nature of this review, the main sources of information used were the websites of the country’s statistics, financial and budget performance reports, lenders’ websites and some academic literature and reviews to provide background information and other comprehensive reviews. There is very limited information on the agreement specific terms for non-financial issues for bilateral lenders. Financial and non-financial terms loan by loan was not available for some lenders. Based on the available information in lender websites, the guidelines of WBG and AfDB Group are reviewed in this report.