A different kind of export earner
Coffee revenue distributes widely and enters the domestic economy through smallholder incomes. Gold revenue, particularly re-export and refining flow, concentrates in a small number of corporate hands and can leave as quickly as it arrives.
The macro consequence is that headline export strength no longer maps cleanly onto household demand or rural incomes.
Reserve and currency effects
The Bank of Uganda benefits from the foreign exchange inflow, but the inflow is correlated with a single volatile price. Terms-of-trade shocks that once arrived through arabica now arrive through bullion, with a faster transmission and a shorter warning period.
The policy inference
Capturing more of the value chain domestically, through royalties actually collected and processing genuinely performed onshore, is what turns a customs statistic into fiscal capacity. Export value alone does not.