Due to unfulfilled concessions signed with various developers in the country’s protected areas, the tourism sector is losing over Shillings 300 million worth of business annually. The government, through the Uganda Wildlife Authority, has signed development concession agreements to provide various services to tourists in national parks, including accommodation facilities, under the public-private arrangement. Hence developing tourism sector.
Recently, over 30 concessions have been signed by UWA to provide accommodation, recreation, and collaborative management services however 8 concessions eight of these concessions in the accommodation segment remain unfulfilled, and they are beyond the scheduled time yet they generate a lot of revenue in tourism sector.
Mainly in the national parks of Lake Mburo, Queen Elizabeth, and Murchison Falls have unfulfilled concessions. According to the UWA executive director Sam Mwandha some of these dormant concessions were signed as early as 2016, and the developers haven’t shown any sign of fulfilling them. “These concessions are supposed to provide a minimum of 10 rooms each, which translates to 80 rooms from all the concessions.” He added.
The revenue generated from this would be at least USD 10 every night, totaling above 300 million every year, but this is still a mere dream.
Developers are holding onto the land and denying would-be immediate developers a chance to access it thus the authority is considering the clauses in these agreements to terminate them.
Mwandha continuously said that they have tried to engage them, but they are giving one reason after another, and they are now engaging to utilize the termination clauses in the contracts so that they can release these sites. Some of them are high-quality sites that would have high-end lodge construction, but people are not moving. They have engaged them, and they hope that before the end of the year, they would have started constructing. If they don’t, they will show them the way out.
The failure to fulfill these concessions affects various sectors like accommodation income sector, tourists with their activities as well as the hosted communities are all affected by this yet they are supposed to generate the income that would develop the tourism sector.
At the recently concluded Pearl of Africa Tourism Expo-POATE, the UWA director warned that the authority will not entertain investors who are not ready for immediate investment during the pitching session to potential investors. The government is still calling for more investors in the tourism sector despite the unfulfilled concessions.
While at POATE, Paul Mwanja the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance, represented commissioning in the same ministry, highlighting the government’s incentives to tourism investors, as well as the expecting results.
