Government withdraws budget documents from Parliament

Kampala. The government has withdrawn twenty Ministerial Policy Statements (MPS) it had tabled before the House, an action the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah, has said is an abuse of process.
Mr Oulanyah said this unwinds the 2018/19 Fiscal Year budget process.
“I was told on my way [to Parliament] that all the Ministerial Policy Statements that had been laid here have been withdrawn from the Clerk’s Office,” Mr Oulanyah said during plenary on Tuesday, March 2017.

“If it is true that the policy statements that were laid here have been withdrawn, it is highly irregular; it is an abuse of process, an abuse of the law. Those who did so will have to come and apologise to the House.”
Mr Oulanyah said given that House plenary had been suspended for one week to allow committee of Parliament to scrutinise the MPS only for some ministers to withdraw them, , it means Parliament wasted a whole week.
Parliament received the MPS that some ministers have since withdrawn on March 15.

As part of the activities that feed into the budget process, the Leader of the Opposition is required to consider the MPS by March 29 to come up with an alternative policy statement.
The House is expected to receive the budget on April 4 and it must pass it by May 31.

Ms Winnie Kiiza, the Leader of the Opposition in the Tenth Parliament, questioned the motive of the ministers who withdrew their MPS.
“I do not know whether it is meant to make the work of Parliament hard so that when we are coming to the last days of budgeting, we are told to hurry up with the process so that we do not scrutinise the budget,” Ms Kiiza said.
She said it could also be that those who withdrew MPS do not want her office to comb through them – so that it cannot suggest better alternatives.

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