Assessment of factors influencing furniture imports in Uganda: a case study of furniture shops in Kampala

Abstract

This study was conducted using furniture shops in Kampala, Uganda. The main objective of the study was to assess determinants of furniture imports in Uganda using a case study of furniture shops in Kampala. The study intended to find out specifically how the price of furniture, quality of imports and cost of raw materials and production process affects the importation of furniture in Uganda. The study utilized a cross sectional survey research design using 40 respondents from the furniture shops in Kampala and simple random sampling was used to select respondents from Kampala city. The study results indicated that most of the respondents (80%) were males while 20% are females. Results from this study also found that 47.5% of the respondents had attained secondary education, 27.5% had attained polytechnic education while only 10% had attained primary education. Majority of the companies (60%) were Ugandan companies, followed by 17.5% which were from Europe, 15% were from China and only 7.5% of them were from India. The study results showed that price of furniture significantly affects the imports of furniture (p-value<0.05) since high prices discourages imports and a unit increase in price of furniture is likely to decrease furniture imports by 11.1%. The study also found that there is a relationship between quality of furniture and furniture imports in Uganda a unit increase in quality of furniture increases the chances of importing furniture by 23.5%. The study findings indicated that there was no relationship between cost of raw materials and production processes and imports of furniture in Uganda (p-value>0.05). This study concluded that price of furniture and quality of furniture significantly affects the imports of furniture while costs of raw materials and production process in Uganda did not. The study recommended that the government of Uganda should provide incentives such as tax holidays and tax exemptions to local producers of furniture in order to reduce their costs of production which makes their final cost of production and process low so that they can ably compete with imported furniture.