Kampala :
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has suggested investors go into provision of high quality health services to limit medical tourism.
Currently, India is the leading provider of these services.
“You should also consider investing in specialized medical facilities to stop medical tourism,” Museveni said recently while meeting potential tourism investors in London.
He said many wealthy people are opting to travel abroad for medical treatment, saying the country spends over $85million in foreign exchange to cover these costs.
‘We need between three to four specialized hospitals. We also need discipline among our people to save the hemorrhage of our money. With high class facilities, the labour costs are low and our people don’t need to spend on tickets and welfare abroad which are the highest costs,” he said.
Museveni said Uganda’s vision is to become an upper middle income country with an average income of $1500. He said the country is working towards attaining urbanization as part of its reorganization process.
“We need more urbanization as part of reorganization of society were we shall have less people in the rural areas and more in the towns so that the rural land is liberated for modern agro production,” he said.
Museveni said Uganda’s population is growing rapidly, “Iif we don’t shift the people from the rural areas, to industries, this will damage the environment. He said Uganda is losing over 40 billon cubic metres of wood per annum for wood fuel and that it is important to industrialize by providing cheap electricity.
“We have established now that to push Uganda up to a middle income country in the next 17 years, we need about $200 billon. There are opportunities for investments especially in infrastructure development. We have some surplus money in our pension fund, but because of careful management of the economy we can’t over borrow,” he said.
source: http://www.allafrica.com / All Africa / East African Business Week (Kampala) / by Paul Tentena / May 21st, 2013
