East African Business Week

KAMPALA, UGANDA- Uganda's quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) that hit a decline in the third quarter of January to March this year has recovered with a 2.4% growth as of June according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics.
The third quarter GDP had declined by 4.2%.
Apart from the 2.4% general GDP growth in the fourth quarter, the agriculture and services sectors also slumped with 5.7% and 0.9% respectively in the quarter following declines in the third quarters.
According Mr. Male Mukasa, the executive director of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, the slump in the agriculture sector was as a result of a decline in value added to cash crops and food crops while the service sector was due to declines in the whole sale and retail activities.
"It was also due to low harvests for some cash crops and food crops in both quarters attributable to poor rain patterns," stressed Male.
He however noted that the transport and communications value grew due to increased air passenger transport and mobile communication activities.
Gross domestic product (GDP) refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living.
The gross domestic product (GDP) is one the primary indicators used to gauge the health of a country's economy. It represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period.
Usually, GDP is expressed as a comparison to the previous quarter or year. For example, if the year-to-year GDP is up 3%, this is thought to mean that the economy has grown by 3% over the last year.
Measuring GDP is complicated, but at its most basic, the calculation can be done in one of two ways.
It's either by adding up what everyone earned in a year (income approach), or by adding up what everyone spent (expenditure method). Logically, both measures should arrive at roughly the same total.
Male indicated it was only the industrial sector that experienced GDP growth, where value added grew by 14.1 in the fourth quarter. This is compared to a reduction of 10.6% in the third quarter of this year. He attributed it to an increase in construction for civil works that resulted into growth of 24.2%.
Trend cycle estimates show that the quarterly GDP grew by 3% in Q4 compared to a decline of 3.6% in Q3.