The final decision over who will eventually win the contract to build the oil refinery – Uganda’s biggest ever projected infrastructural project may be only a few weeks away but the winners appear to be emerging already, RT Global Resources – the Russian bidders in Uganda recently entered a partnership with one of South Korea’s major refinery operators known as GS to undertake their Engineering, Procurement and Construction work.
This means that GS engineers and experts from Korea will perform the most important and technical work for the Russians in a number of countries involved.
Data shows that SK group that bid for the Ugandan project, is a bigger company by the volumes of oil processed.
This prompted Ambassador Park to boast about his country’s advancement when it comes to the oil and petrol-chemical industry.
“That proves how good Korea is when it comes to refinery projects,” said Ambassador Park.
While Uganda is said to have had a gross domestic product, (GDP) equivalent to that of Korea by the time of independence, the Asian registered one of the most dramatic economic growth and transformation ever recorded in the history of development.
Under ruthless military leadership of Gen. Park Chung-hee between 1962 and 1979, South Korea underwent one of the fastest economic transformation from a peasant society to a middle income country.
Among the most outstanding decisions taken by Gen. Park’s government, included the deliberate investment into strategic sectors such as the heavy and chemicals industry. President Chung-hee also implemented a vicious anti-corruption campaign that involved arresting the corrupt officials and nationalising their assets. He also implemented massive infrastructural reforms as well as an import substitution strategy that later turned into an export strategy.
Today, the petro-chemical industry of South Korea is one of the biggest in the region. According to Ambassador Park, workers in this sector enjoy the highest GDP per capita in the country.
While Uganda has over the past few years dolled out most of the big infrastructural projects to Chinese companies, a number of them have ended up with more question marks than praises. Among these is the National ICT data transmission back-born project that was undertaken by the Chinese company Huawei. Besides questions about quality, the US$106 backbone project was delivered years beyond its expected completion time.
A similar project carried out by a South Korean company in Rwanda helped the country achieve e-government goals ahead of everyone else in the region.
