The Minister of State for Trade, General Wilson Mbadi, has reaffirmed support to strengthening the decentralisation of Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) services aimed at reducing the cost of doing business for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in order to achieve the government target of growing the economy tenfold from USD 49.5 billion as of FY 2023/2024 to USD 500 billion in the next 15 years. These remarks were made during the Minister’s maiden visit to the UNBS Northern region office, based in Gulu city and at the One Stop Border Post (OSBP) in Elegu.
In his submission to the Minister, the UNBS Executive Director, Eng. James Kasigwa, noted that UNBS is currently operating at limited capacity in terms of financial and human resource, which affects service delivery and the potential for UNBS to generate the highly needed Non Tax Revenue (NTR) for government. He thus requested for the Minister’s support in terms of increased funding and staffing for UNBS to support government’s priority of export promotion, imports substitution and industrial growth.
The State Minister for Trade, Hon. Mbadi, applauded UNBS for the work done using the meagre resources, and committed to support the increase of UNBS funding and staffing to strengthen the decentralisation of UNBS services. In the financial year 2023/2024, UNBS certified over 5,000 products and over 1,600 MSMEs. The minister also cited the need to have UNBS regional offices and presence in all the ten (10) Agro ecological zones and all planned industrial parks in the country to support production of quality products and fast track certification of MSMEs.
Currently, the UNBS Northern region office offers certification, testing and market surveillance services to the business community in West Nile, Lango, Acholi, Parts of Karamoja and lately Masindi district. UNBS also has the Western region office based in Mbarara and the Eastern region office based in Mbale but some critical services of UNBS like Calibration and Legal Metrology are not offered in the regional offices.
The UNBS decentralisation agenda is aimed at;
• Improving efficiency in service delivery by reducing the cost of doing business since MSMEs in the different regions can now get UNBS Certification and testing services without travelling to the UNBS Head office in Kampala. It should be noted that over 90% enterprises in the country are MSMEs and 40% of these are concentrated in the central region while 60% are located in the county side.
• Facilitating the certification and growth of enterprises and improving compliance to standards for the 60% MSMEs located in the country side.
• Improving competitiveness of locally manufactured products in different parts of the country, to support export promotion and import substitution in line with the Parish Development Model and the National Development Plan IV.
Gen. Mbadi together with Eng. Kasigwa also paid a courtesy visit to the UNBS offices at the Elegu OSBP where UNBS carries out imports inspection to protect the public from importation of substandard products.
UNBS continues to perform its mandate of consumer protection, ensuring fair trade and enhancing the competiveness of Ugandan products on the domestic, regional and continental markets.
