The Contribution of Non-traditional Agricultural Exports to Uganda’s Gross Domestic Product from 1995 to 2008.

Abstract

KADDU MILLY (2008- 03-MSCDE-PT-009) The Contribution of Non-traditional Agricultural Exports to Uganda’s Gross Domestic Product from 1995 to 2008 This study was about the contribution of the non-traditional agricultural exports to Uganda’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 1995 to 2005. The general objective was to establish the trend and contribution of maize, beans and flower exports to Uganda’s GDP. The hypotheses were; the value of beans exports was constant throughout the study period; the value of maize exports was constant throughout the study period and the value of flower exports was constant throughout the study period. Secondary data were collected from the Uganda bureau of statistics. Linear regression analysis was used to establish the contribution of each independent variable to the dependent variable. Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analyses were done. The data were tested for stationary using Eviews statistical package. When it exhibited trends of non-stationary, logs were taken and the second level differencing was done on it to make it stationary. The findings indicated that all the independent variables contributed significantly at 5% level of significance. This is because the probability to the T- statistic of flowers exports is 0.01, that of maize exports is 0.48 and for beans exports is 0.042 which is less than 0.05. It can be concluded that beans exports, maize exports and flower exports contribute significantly to Uganda’s GDP and their contribution is increasing over time though at varying magnitudes. Flowers exports contributed 45.6%, beans exports contributed 11.9% while maize exports contributed 12.2% to the GDP over the study period as was established by the multi variety analysis. It is, therefore, recommended that the farmers should provide wider acreage especially for flowers, which were found to have bigger returns once exported. Key words: Contribution, Agricultural, Export, Domestic