Defence ministry on the spot over inflated maize budget

Legislators on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Tuesday queried what they termed an “exaggerated budget” in which the Ministry of Defence and Veteran Affairs invested Shs1.7million per acre of maize compared to approximately Shs500,000 lawmakers say most maize farmers spend over the same.

Officials from the ministry led by Undersecretary Edith Butuuro labored to explain amidst unrelenting legislators who among others accused Defense of wastage of resources while other governments MDAs struggle with underfunding.

Parliamentarians were probing concerns raised by the Auditor General in his report for the Financial Year ending June 2023- even as the ministry is one of the top three highly funded in the budget.

According to the report, the said ministry “invested Shs21billion in the Strategic Intervention on Food and Animal Feed Security, with a pledge to generate shs37billion from the sales.”

They only generated Shs9billion.

“This resulted in an underperformance of Shs28.9billion, representing 76 per cent under performance,” the report states.

It also emerged that only 8,958 acres were cultivated out of the planned 14,709 acres, according to the report.

On Tuesday, committee Chairperson Muwanga Kivumbi decried investment of public funds without prior planning which leads to losses.

“You had a duty, even if it was handed to you as an implementing agency, to study the cost implementation and know whether we were investing rightly. We are pushing money down the drain. You are better off going to the market and buying food,” Kivumbi added.

Ibanda County South Member of Parliament (MP) Xavier Kyooma said: “In Bihanga Farm, when UPDF came, this land had been given to residents to plant crops. People had already planted crops but when they came they sprayed all the crops and destroyed them.”

“What emergency is this where you are   fighting food shortage but destroying all crops already planted?” he asked.

In the ministry’s defence, Butuuro said costing was done by the Ministry of Agriculture (MAAIF) who handed down the concept note as approved by cabinet.

The intervention was conceived by cabinet in 2022 to avert a looming food and animal feed insecurity. It remained unclear why MAAIF handed down the implementation to other entities including UPDF Farms, Prisons and NEC,

“We had to do bush clearing, get a grader, a bulldozer, and clear the bush. The cost of each is Shs1million per day…,” UPDF Chief of Production and Welfare Maj Gen Sam Kiwanuka said to highlight the process that justified the cost.

The officials also attributed underperformance to “late planting, unpredictable weather patterns and use of manual labor which led to low plant population.”

Meanwhile, the Auditor General also red flagged failure to provide an irrigation system worth Shs259million that was paid but no system was available upon inspection.