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This new development comes against the backdrop of the back out of western financiers over concerns of environmental safety and the most recently passed anti-homosexuality bill.
The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development revealed that Uganda is in the final stages of talks with the China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure) and the Export-Import Bank of China (Eximbank) to fund the much-anticipated EACOP.
The energy ministry’s permanent secretary, Irene Bateebe, while addressing the media recently, said that Sinosure and Eximbank are working together to provide funding for EACOP.
“We are at the tail end of the discussions [with Chinese lenders] for financial close. We are confident that by the end of October of this year, we will close the debt component, and we will have mobilised most of the funding for the project,” Bateebe said.
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It should be noted that the State Minister for Energy and Mineral Development, Peter Lokeris, said that the World Bank's decision to halt financing for Ugandan projects will not affect EACOP.
The Minister, who revealed this on Thursday, August 10, 2023, while addressing journalists at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala, said that Uganda has "other friends" who will fund EACOP. Lokeris was updating journalists on the progress of EACOP.
"We have many friends. Other people will give us the money, and that’s why the President [Museveni] said we don’t need them very much," Lokeries said before explaining that the EACOP project will be undertaken by private companies.