Uganda's long-awaited cabinet was sworn in on Friday with a lineup showing President Yoweri Museveni 's determination to spur the east African country to the next level of economic growth.

On the cabinet list released on Thursday night, Museveni retained his right hand man Ezra Suruma, Minister of Finance Planning and Economic development, to champion his vision of transforming the country from one of the most underdeveloped to a thriving regional power.

The retention of Suruma, who is critical of the liberalization process and dependency on foreign aid fronted by the developed countries, has been hailed by analyst as Museveni's spirited move to develop the country's economy.

Museveni also introduced the Ministry of Information Communication and Technology, which will in conjunction with the finance ministry create an arena for IT-led economic growth.

In regional vision, Museveni, an advocate for East African Federation, introduced a ministry in charge of east African affairs to advance Uganda's interest in the future regional group, including Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

"The east African goal of creating an East African Federation is sweet music to revolutionaries of Uganda," Museveni said in his inaugural speech on May 12 for his third elected term.

The Ugandan leader believed a federation will solve strategic and economic bottlenecks of not only East Africa but of the rest of Africa.

"In the next five years it will be much easier to move faster so that we aim at completely transforming our society from a third world one to a first world one, in the medium, to use the words of Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore," he proclaimed.

Uganda's economic growth has more than tripled to about 10 billion US dollars since 1986 with an average growth rate of 6.3 percent per year, according to the statistics of Finance Ministry.

However, challenges have set in undermining the success already scored when experts warned the economy growth would drop to 4.9 percent, largely because of the biting power crisis.

Industrial production, due to power crisis, in next financial year, according to the National Budget Framework Paper for Financial Year 2006/7--2008/9, is projected to slow down to 5.2 percent from 10.6 percent last year.

With the economy seemingly under siege, Museveni has vowed to make a change.

He blamed the donors' holding back for current power crisis who believed Uganda would face a problem of surplus energy if more dams were built at the same time.

"I want to assure Ugandans that such mistakes will never occur again. We are going to build two new dams in the next 42 months with or without the participation of outsiders in financing," Museveni said.

Museveni has also indicated that in the next five years, government will accept foreign aid selectively and the role of development partners should be limited to supporting the country's economic vision.

"Their role is to support the vision of Uganda - nothing more, nothing less," he said, "Any aid-led vision rather than vision-led strategy is bound to fail or, at best, produce mediocre results."

As these vows are being made, observers say Uganda will face hard times if it decides to ignore foreign aid that takes over half of its national budget.

Another vice the Museveni-led government would have to fight is corruption, which analysts say has engulfed most government departments.

By dropping the three ministers in the Ministry of Health in the new cabinet, who were accused of negligence in the misuse of the Global Fund, Museveni sent signals that he has started a campaign against corruption.

Source: Xinhua