Time series analysis of Uganda’s international trade with the East African Community from 1988-2018

Abstract

This study was undertaken with the aim of assessing the time series analysis of Uganda’s international trade with the E.A.C from 1988 to 2018 with the Republics of Kenya and Tanzania as the time components.. Secondary data was collected from UBOS and from different statistical abstracts such as the International Trade Centre cite. Augmented Dicker fuller test, Partial Auto correlation function, Auto correlation function, Cumulative Periodogram, white noise test and the Durbin-Watson test were used. In this study we investigated the change in the yearly trends of trade incidence in Uganda from 1988 to 2018 to determine if there is any increase or decrease international trade with E.A.C. A trend analysis was applied to both the yearly international trade values with E.A.C and years with both fitted to their appropriate ARIMA model. The trend still shows that there also an increasing trend in trade both exports and imports) as notified in different years (2000-2015 moderate increasing trend). The recommendations by the researcher are that the government come in strongly to promote local sectors i.e. agricultural, industrial, tourism, etc. so as to cut off on the volume of imports from the sampled countries. This is to mitigate in reducing and increasing imports and export respectively. Then the non-government organisations within trading sectors to style up with the quantities and qualities of items exported so as to compete favourably with the rest of the countries in EAC and beyond.