The Effect of Exports on Economic Growth of Uganda

Abstract

The main objective of the study is to examine effect of exports on economic growth of Uganda. The study employed secondary yearly time series for the period 1983-2018. The analysis was made at three different levels that is: summary statistics, Pearson correlation and the multiple linear regression. In the results, GNI has a mean of 2.366, Exports grows at an average of 9.544, the average of imports growth is 6.357, the population grows at an average of 3.258, and capital grows at an average of 7.607. At bivariate level, the research shows that there is significant relation between export growth, import growth, and capital growth with GNI per capita of Uganda (p<0.05), while population growth is not significantly related with GNI per capita (p>0.05) In the multivariate analysis GNI per capita growth was significantly associated with capital growth at 10%, this shows that economic growth increased as capital grows, while GNI per capita growth was not significantly related to the export growth, import growth and population growth at 10%. In conclusion, the Export growth has insignificant positive relation at 10% with economic growth. There is negative correlation between capital and population which shows that Uganda is still experiencing low levels of modern technology which retards economic growth. The negative relationship between exports and population shows which that most of export firms are owned by foreigners which stimulate cash out flow which is not good for Uganda‟s growth.