The Economic Impact of the Lockdown Due to COVID-19 Pandemic on Low Income Households of the Five Divisions of Kampala District in Uganda

摘要

The impact of the nationwide lockdown due to COVID - 19 pandemic is causing tremendous and continuing hardships to low income Ugandans specifically the casual worker’s section that earns and spends on a daily basis. Households in the lowest income brackets are the hardest hit, due to inconsistency in income streams of these household breadwinners and the inelastic nature of basic expenditure of these households. The government has been providing food relief support packages of posho and beans to this section of Ugandans starting with residents of Bwaise, a suburb in Kawempe Division of the capital Kampala. The government has also appealed to well off Ugandans to donate food relief packages to the COVID-19 national task force to ensure food relief donations continue throughout the whole specifically to the hard hit areas because the duration of the food support relief cannot be estimated now but it will depend on how long the lockdown situation will remain and what rate of normalization is in the coming days after lifting of the lockdown. Objective of this paper : The objective of this short paper is, first to provide realistic assessment of the massive impact of the lockdown due to COVID - 19 situation in Uganda from a household perspective of low income families and secondly is to propose a food relief support packages to low income households that have been hit hard by this lockdown situation. Both must be considered in the short term situation until the economy is able to bounce back in the medium term situation.