KAMPALA (Reuters) -Uganda is negotiating a new round of funding with the International Monetary Fund after a previous one lapsed last year, a top Ugandan finance ministry official said on Tuesday.
The East African country’s previous Extended Credit Facility, which commenced in 2021 and was worth about $1 billion, expired last year with only about $870 million of the program’s funding being disbursed.
“Uganda is currently negotiating a new Extended Credit Facility Program with the IMF,” Ramathan Ggoobi, the ministry of finance permanent secretary who doubles as secretary to the Treasury, told a meeting of ambassadors, according to a ministry of finance post on the X platform.
The new program, Ggoobi told the officials, according to the post, “is expected to be presented to the IMF Board after the general elections early next year 2026.”
Uganda is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections in January or February next year, according to the national electoral body. A final date is yet to be fixed.
Uganda is eager to agree a new funding program with the IMF as it struggles to find fresh sources of cheap funding to help slow the rise of its already mountainous public debt.
The country’s total stock of public debt rose 17.8% last year to $29.1 billion. As a percentage of GDP, the debt stock increased to 52.1% at end of 2024 from 49.9% in the previous period, according to the ministry of finance.
While announcing the expiration of the previous program in September 2024 the IMF said the funding round had lapsed “against the backdrop of program implementation challenges compounded by external funding constraints.”
(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Toby Chopra)
