Mr Prime Minister, overhaul the entire public service sector
Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda announced recently that government was in advanced stages of a downsising the 119 statutory authorities, commissions and agencies in order “to cut duplication of mandates, redundancies and wastage of public resources”.Apparently, the government has realised, though late, that it had gone overboard in the craze of creating these monstrous organisations, many of which were of marginal value if not utterly useless. That the number was allowed to rise to 119 was both shocking and absurd.
I hope the government will also now realise that its policy of balkanisation of the country into miniscule and economically unviable districts, needs complete reversal. Another area that needs urgent ‘surgery’ is Parliament whose size has mushroomed to more than 400 MPs, doing very little for the country in spite of their incredibly inflated salaries, which, they determine themselves. Soon after the NRM came to power in 1986, it embarked on an exercise it believed would make government leaner and more efficient. With regard to corruption and nepotism, it promised to banish them from the face of Uganda. The reverse has happened. Government has grown much larger, less efficient and the deadly scourges of corruption and nepotism have multiplied a ‘thousand times’.
NRM started off by dismantling what previous regimes had left behind; in particular parastatal bodies, agricultural co-operatives, industries, public utilities, public transport companies, including Uganda Railways and Uganda Airlines. If they were not entirely dismantled, they were concessioned or franchised to so-called foreign investors at giveaway prices. The NRM government, originally socialist in outlook, converted to extreme capitalism, almost completely disengaging itself from doing any business, sticking to “creation of an enabling environment that will encourage the growth of the private sector and attract foreign investors”. China, now the second largest economy in the world with a share of 13.9 per cent of the global economy (behind US at 23 per cent), is predominantly public sector-driven.
Almost all the major works China is doing in Uganda are done by government-owned corporations. The funding Uganda receives from China comes from the EXIM Bank of China, a government-owned entity sitting on the surplus trillions of dollars from China’s export-driven development. China is politically communist, but has become ‘economically capitalist’ giving traditional capitalist, countries “a run for the money”.
The government accepted the structural adjustments programmes (SAPs) of the World Bank right from the late 1980s and commenced the process of dismantling government parastatals and cooperatives, which because of “inefficiency, poor management and corruption,” were said to be a drain on the economy.
Sometimes the World Bank was not very ‘subtle’ in pushing restructuring down the throat of the government. It made the winding of these bodies a conditionality for cheap financing from Bretton Woods Institutions and by extension from the Western donors. Some of these parastatals indeed needed to go, but others required a new sense of direction and adaptation to modern practices.
For instance, Uganda Co-operative Bank, Uganda Commercial Bank, amd Banyankole Kweterana, among others, did not need to be wound out wholesale. The fact that government is already embarking on reviving co-operatives is proof that their absence left a gap that provided linkages between farmers and the market. Uganda Commercial Bank was sold ‘for a song’ to Stanbic, at the time when there were clear indications that it was on its way to becoming profitable again.
The mushrooming of authorities, commission and agencies had the negative impact of sideling ministries and financially dwarfing them. They became conduits for corruption and nepotism. Recruitment was not very transparent, with well connected persons sometimes being selected over better qualified candidates. It is imperative that government reviews the recruitment process in those authorities and stops the exorbitant salary scales. There is no reason why a Permanent Secretary should earn less than the people he supervises.
Mr Naggaga is an economist, administrator and retired ambassador.
[email protected]
