Hon Minister Judith Nabakooba Press Statement on the status of performance of the USMID Program

Uganda Support to Municipal Infrastructure Development (USMID) is a Program for Results (PforR) operation that initially run for 5 years (September 4, 2013 to December 31 2018) but was later extended to December 31, 2023 upon receipt of Additional Financing (AF). The initial phase of USMID had a total funding of US$ 138M, and all the funds were allocated to 14 Program participating Municipal Local Governments which was used for infrastructure development and capacity building. The 14 beneficiary Local Governments were (Entebbe, Moroto, Kabale, Mbarara, Masaka, Fortportal, Hoima, Gulu, Mbale, Tororo, Jinja, Arua, Lira and Soroti).?10 of these as you may be aware have since been turned into Cities, because of the achievements they made during the USMID program.

The Ministry started implementing the Additional Financing phase (currently ongoing) on April 11, 2019 and its total funding was US$ 360 million of which US$25Million was a grant. The funding was also from the World Bank.?The Objective of the program did not change from the original USMID phase, and so was the lending instrument which remained as a PforR (Program for Results). This lending instrument means that the disbursement of finances to the local Governments is based on the performance of the said local government- this means, that getting money to implement is not guaranteed, but the local government must work for it. This current phase of the program is expected to close this year, December 31, 2023.

From 14 Municipalities, the additional funding phase extended the geographical scope to an extra 8 Municipalities of (Busia, Apac, Ntungamo, Kasese, Lugazi. Kamuli, Kitgum, and Mubende). Due to the presence of the grant in the funding, there was also a Government decision that some of the district local governments that faced a high influx of refugees would be supported. These are (Isingiro, Kamwenge, Kiryandongo, Obongi, Lamwo, Terego, Madi-Okollo, Arua, Adjumani, Moyo, and Yumbe). This means that right now, the Ministry is implementing USMID in 10 Cities, 12 Municipalities and 11 Refugee Hosting District. The Ministry support to the RHDs is in three fold;- infrastructure that enhances social cohesion between refugees and the host communities, physical planning of the land of the host communities and systematic land adjudication and titling of the same land.

The implementation structure for the USMID program includes a steering committee chaired by the Permanent Secretary/ Secretary to the Treasury-MoFPED, a program technical committee chaired by MLHUD, as the executing agency, and the 33 program Local Governments as the implementing agencies. The team which forms the program technical committee is drawn from about 16 different Ministries Departments and Agencies, to manage the policy supervision of the technical team. This is from the Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development, Ministry of Local Government, Ministry of Works and Transport, Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development, OPM, NEMA, PPDA, Uganda Road Fund, NPA, The Association of Urban Authorities, and the Local Government Finance Commission.

• The Program Development Objective is to enhance the institutional performance of Program Local Governments to improve urban service delivery, and the expected outcomes are to;
• Strengthened capacities of participating cities/municipalities in fiduciary, safeguards, urban planning and own source revenue (OSR) generation,
• Increase in total planned infrastructure completed by participating municipal LGs,?
• Enhanced service delivery through improved local infrastructure in Local Governments hosting refugees, and?
• Enhanced capacity of MLHUD for urban development, management and back-stopping for the implementation of the Program.

What is the current implementation status

1. The cities/ municipalities have been able to:

• Tool and retool their offices with different categories of office equipment like laptops, desktops, printers, photocopiers, printers, and scanners.?
• Acquire specialized equipment for surveys, engineering, and environment, and motorcycles for enhancing revenue collection.
• Renovate office blocks, conference halls, and sanitation facilities and equip them with furniture, and communication equipment.
• Prepare structural and detailed plans, survey, and title land.
• Undertake street addressing and plot numbering.
• Update revenue registers, register taxpayers, property valuation, sensitize taxpayers, and implement the integrated revenue administration system.
• Provide training for staff in several career development and professional courses.?

2. The central government has provided capacity building through trainings, meetings, and hands-on technical support in;

• Procurement and contract management (PPDA).
• Environment and social safeguards (MLHUD, NEMA, MGLSD).
• Revenue mobilization, implementation of revenue databases, and the Integrated Revenue Administration Systems (IRAS) (LGFC).?
• Induction of councilors in their roles and responsibilities (MoLG).?
• Engineering designs, ESIA, and RAPs for priority infrastructure.
• Development of physical development and detailed plans.
• Communication, transparency, and accountability through the City/ Municipal Development Forums.
• Development of stormwater drainage master plans for the program Local Governments and engineering designs for primary drainage channels.
• Development of solid waste management strategies for all the 10 cities and 12 municipalities.
• Centralized procurement of specialized equipment for surveys, environment, physical planning, and waste management vehicles.

3. The capacity of the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development as the supervising Ministry for urban service delivery has been improved through staff training, provision of office equipment, and development of systems for example;

• Development of the National Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Policy (LARRP).
• Updating the urban roads design manual together with MoWT.?
• Development of Standard bidding documents that take into consideration aspects of the environment and social safeguards on civil works contracts.
• Development of the national valuation standards and guidelines.?
• Development of a comprehensive valuation professionalization framework.
• Development of a professional program for valuers.
• Updating the National Physical Planning Standards and Guidelines.
• Development of the National Enforcement Framework for Compliance to Land Use regulatory framework.
• Preparation of the Physical planners Registration act.

Status performance on infrastructure implementation in the Cities/ Municipalities (USMID &USMID-AF)

• During the first phase of USMID, a total of 78.4km of urban roads were completed in 13 Municipalities and commissioned by HE the President between May-June 2019.?Only Moroto Municipality did not have roads for commissioning, for they had preferred to use their financing to construct a bus park, with 36 storied kiosks for traders.
• Under the current additional Financing phase, 51.8km of urban roads were completed by June 30, 2023, and are ready for commissioning. An additional 87.1km will be completed by December 2023 when the program is expected to close. All these urban roads are constructed fully with their associated furniture like solar streetlights, cycle lanes, parking lanes, pedestrian walkways, bus bays, street trash cans, and drainage among others.

The table summarizes all the sub-projects that were implemented under the first phase of USMID and those implemented under the Additional Financing. It shows that at the end of USMID, a total of 217.3km of roads and the associated infrastructure will have been constructed.

Roads

The road infrastructure subprojects that have been completed so far, are in 6 cities and 6 municipalities and they are ready for commissioning. These roads cover a total of 51.8km (Arua 3.5km, Entebbe 2.1km, Gulu, 9.5km, Jinja 5.9km, Kamuli 1.5km, Kitgum 7.1km, Lugazi 2.5km, Masaka 6.3km, Mbale 6km, Mubende 2.8km, Soroti 3.3km, Tororo 1.4km) and they are all 2-lane equivalent length.?

Execution of road infrastructure subprojects is ongoing covering in 9 cities and 11 municipalities with the exception of Soroti City and Kitgum Municipality whose road infrastructure subprojects have all been completed. The roads under execution cover a total of 87.1km (2-lane equivalent). These roads will be completed by the end of December 2023.

Standalone solar streetlights

Three cities and three municipalities have successfully installed a total of 2,980 solar streetlights (Gulu 500, Mbarara 704, Masaka 1,380, Lugazi 203, Ntungamo 77, Kabale 93) along paved roads that were constructed by other agencies, not Ministry of Lands.?The installation of 250 solar streetlights is still pending in Lugazi Municipality and an extra 107 in Kabale Municipality.

Local Economic Development Infrastructure

Local economic development subprojects have been implemented in three cities (Mbarara, Lira, and Hoima) and four Municipalities (Moroto, Entebbe, Mubende, and Busia). Lira City, Moroto, and Entebbe Municipality undertook completion activities on subprojects that were implemented during the first phase of USMID. ?

Moroto Municipality also completed the bus terminal while for Lira City, ongoing is the completion work on the Coronation Park and Childrens Park, while Entebbe Municipality is completing the Kitoro Taxi Park building by adding on a floor on top of the first floor that was constructed under USMID.?

The new local economic development subprojects are the construction of the Taxi Park and beautification of the Mayor's Garden in Mubende, the beautification of the Rwebikoona market parking area in Mbarara City, the construction of an animal slaughterhouse in Hoima City and the Taxi Park in Busia Municipality. These sub-projects will be ready for commissioning by the end of December 2023.?

USMID-AF SUPPORT TO THE 11 REFUGEE HOSTING DISTRICTS

• Road infrastructure subprojects?
• Seven (7) refugee hosting districts are implementing 40 road infrastructure subprojects that cover a total of 209km.?
• Twenty-six (26) roads covering 251.4km are to be upgraded to gravel standard.
• Eleven (11) roads totaling 35.5km are to be upgraded to sealed roads?
• Three (3) roads covering a distance of 31. km is to be upgraded to Asphalt Concrete standard.?

• Static infrastructure subprojects

The refugee hosting districts are implementing a number of static infrastructure sub-projects that include leisure parks (1No), markets (17No.), playgrounds fields (7No.), resource centers (21No.), taxi parks (1No.), bridges (4No.) and drainage channels (3No.).

These sub-projects are intended to improve the coexistence between the refugees and host communities. The earliest implementation start date for these subprojects was April 2022 while the latest end date is December 30, 2023.

• Status of Physical planning in the RHDs

The Ministry has since prepared physical development frameworks for all the 11RHDs, and ongoing is the preparation of physical development plans

• Status performance on SLAAC in RHDs

The Ministry commenced SLAAC activities with sampling Kamwenge district- Kaberebere in Nkoma sub-county and out of the 1208 parcels mapped, 23 land titles were issued in October 2021, the rest of the titles (194) are ready for issuance while the remaining 908 LAFs have been approved by the district Land board.?

The SLAAC process continues in the other District Local Governments and all the planned parcels should be concluded and issued out by December 31, 2023 the program closure date.

Table showing static sub-projects in the 11 RHDS?

USMID Implementation has faced the following major challenges?

Relocation of utilities (power, water, telecom lines, and security installations) along the right of way during the construction of roads and local economic infrastructure. A lot of time is wasted on negotiations with the service providers before the relocations are done. On average 5% of the contract price is given to utility companies for the relocation of their service lines by the program participating local governments.? To ease this, the Ministry has prepared a paper on this issue and will be seeking a harmonized policy approach for the location of utilities within the right of way as a mitigation measure and clear modalities for dealing with the issue of relocation.?

Cash flow challenges resulting from the treasury single account operation in which funds are swept from the program participating local governments at the end of the financial year. The delayed revoting of the swept funds to the program participating local governments has caused implementation challenges with the local governments failing to meet their contractual obligations and some contractors have claimed for interest over delayed payments which money is not provided for in the credit.?The Ministry is now seeking a sub-treasury single account in which funds are devoted to the program participating local governments as soon as the new financial year starts without any further delays.

What next after December 31, 2023?

Preparation of a follow-on program to USMID

The Midterm review conducted by the Ministry in May 2022 on the performance of the USMID-AF pointed out the ever-increasing high demand for urban infrastructure in urban areas because of rapid urbanization, especially in the newly created cities with exponentially extended boundaries to which the institutional capacities to deliver such services remain inadequate.?

The midterm review, therefore, recommended a five-year follow-on program estimated at US$ 750 million.?Based on this recommendation the Ministry has since prepared a concept for a follow-on program named -Uganda Cities and Municipalities Infrastructure Development (UCMID) Program. The concept note was approved by the Development Subcommittee- MoFPED, and so have they approved profile and feasibility studies. The Ministry is currently conducting feasibility studies.

The geographical scope of the program (UCMID) will include all the Local Governments under USMID-AF (10 cities, 12 municipalities) and an additional 15 Municipalities that are not currently under the program and these shall be; Mityana, Iganga, Masindi, Rukungiri, Bushenyi-Ishaka, Kumi, Nebbi, Koboko, Kisoro, Kapchorwa, Ibanda, Njeru, Bugiri, Sheema, and Kotido. ?

Urban roads of 116km, 22 local economic development, and 57 km of primary drainage channels have been designed and are ready for implementation in the next phase, once the Government and the world bank sign the financing agreements.

The Ministry is now in the process of preparing engineering designs for additional urban roads of 197km, primary drainage channels of 33km, and 6 local economic subprojects in the 10 cities and 12 municipalities under the current phase. Preparation of engineering designs for the additional 15 municipalities that will join the program will be done after they the program has been approved.