A lot has been said and speculated about Uganda Airlines since its closure in May 2001. Scholars, businessmen, politicians and many other categories of people have come up with mostly unqualified schools of thought about the role the Airline was playing or would have played to the plight of the country especially towards trade benefits.
My quest for some of the answers to ascertain the gravity the airline was/would provide therefore led me to an analysis of a number of literature reviews. This prompted me to examine the effects of some of the determinants of Air transport to Uganda’s trade volume.
In my probe, trade volume (TV) which in my case was the summation of total exports to total imports in a given period was the dependent variable while air departures (AD),air exports (AX) and terms of trade (TOT) were taken as the independent variables. I therefore collected data for each of the explanatory variables for the period 1991 to 2014. Unit root test was done to avoid non stationarity otherwise referred to as the trending behavior of variables over time. This was done using the ADF tool and TOT was found to be stationary at level while the other variables were found to be stationary at first difference. The ordinary least squares (OLS) method was used to estimate the relationship between trade volume and its determinants using STATA software.
The regression process indicated that air departures and terms of trade have a very small almost insignificant bearing to trade volume. On the other hand, air exports have more gravity to trade volume at 10% level of significance.
Finally, a review of the Uganda’s freight charges to the commercial airlines as well as improvement and expansion of the cold storage facilities at the airport would improve the air trade process and consequently the trade volume.