Fifty-two Million US Dollars, out of the $147Million spent by the licensed oil companies on procurement, between 2017 and 2020, was on local entities owned by Ugandans.
This represents 35.75% of the total procurement spend by the lOCs, “1,700 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) had their capacity built in the areas of health, safety and environment, bid management, financing, corporate governance, among others”, reports Jessica Kyeyune, National Content Specialist at the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC).
546 entities registered on the National Supplier Database (NSD) have so far been contracted in the country oil and gas sector. Out of these 498 (91%) were Ugandan entities while 48 (9%) were non-Ugandan.
Ugandan nationals directly employed by the oil companies as of September 2021 stand at 81%, with 59% at management, 75% technical and 100% of their support staff, according to data by UNOC.
4,435 Ugandans have been trained by the Oil companies in various technical disciplines to competitively participate in the oil and gas sector.
“The companies are creating many spin-offs in areas such as employment and secondary industrial services”, Kyeyune explains. “This has created direct benefits to the economy through generating tax revenues and improvement of infrastructure, such as roads, leading to a decrease in the cost of doing business in the country”.
It is the view of UNOC as well as the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) that local gains from oil & gas investment will be bolstered by further field development and exploration, joint ventures and farm-in arrangements in existing licenses, the production and processing of the crude oil, transportation facilitates and services related to this field (engineering, pipelines, storages facilities and refinery construction).
“The impact created by oil companies is on a growth trajectory and we believe the companies are contributing to the eluviation of poverty in the country by providing employment that pays higher than a living wage, improving the standards of living for many Ugandans and impacting the indirect and induced sectors of the economy like Agriculture, education, tourism, to mention but a few”, Kyeyune says. “All these are achieving National Content on a direct, indirect and induced aspects of the Oil & Gas value chain”.
