By Rogers Wanambwa 

KIU, Main Campus - During an April 2020 meeting, the Bank of Uganda announced that its benchmark lending rate had been lowered to 9% to 'cushion the Coronavirus-induced deterioration in macroeconomic conditions and in order to ensure adequate access to credit and the normal functioning of financial markets.'

This comes as the country's economic growth is slowing down drastically in the second half of 2019/2020 from the previously estimated 6% to 3-4%. 

In addition, policymakers did add that although GDP growth is expected to gradually recover in the second half of 2020/2021, the emerging output gap is mostly like to persist until 2022.

With all this slowing down of the economy, the policymakers said that inflationary pressures are expected to remain low given that there is, and are going to be a weak domestic demand and also lower external pressures due to the global recession. 

Inflation is seen in the range of 2-3% in 2020 and this follows the assumption that COVID-19 will be contained by June 2020. In addition to this, they said to expect the economy to have a gradual recovery in the second half of 2020.