Prime
Govt to drop banks holding PDM money, says Nabbanja
Ugandan Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja delivers her remarks at an event in Kampala on November 29, 2023. PHOTO/DERRICK ROLAND NASASIRA
What you need to know:
- Government says PDM implementation is at about 80 per cent as of November 30, 2023.
Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja has urged all commercial banks to release Parish Development Model (PDM) money to allow government meet its objectives.
“The major intention is for our people to have this money to buy farm inputs and seeds so that they can do farming but the banks are still holding onto the money irrespective of applicants having met all the requirements,” Nabbanja observed.
According to her, government has come up with a policy to guide the State in dealing with banks depending on their cooperation in PDM implementation.
“If banks are still holding the money and lending it to people for other intentions at the expense of the poor people who need it, they are not getting this opportunity again,” she emphasized at the opening of a 2-day seminar on modalities for joint system-wide evaluation of operational activities for development of the United Nations systems in Uganda.
Meanwhile, head of secretariat coordination at the United Nations Independent system-wide evaluation mechanism (UNISWEM) said the gathering was important to understand the contribution of the UN systems towards the realization of Uganda’s development priorities.
“There is no evidence at this stage to know how Uganda is performing when it comes to the realization of the SDGs in comparison to other countries in the region. However, there is greater promise that once we begin to engage in these evaluations, we will begin to generate evidence,” Wandwasi noted.
Wandwasi disclosed that the UN system signed a sustainable development framework with the Ugandan government, specifying result-based objectives.
“This system-wide evaluation will help in generating evidence to citizens of Uganda and donors that Uganda can do well on the basis of the information that will be generated from the evaluations,” he remarked.
The seminar also aimed to set up a multi-stakeholder group to plan and oversee the implementation of system-wide evaluation based on the cooperation framework in Uganda, among others.
In his presentation about Uganda’s national development plan and its alignment to the UN system, National Planning Authority executive director Joseph Muvawala advised that “as the country goes into national development plan four (NDP IV), government must be deliberate in its operations because it is not performing well in several sectors.”
“We are approving projects that are not ready for implementation. We have more hospitals but with less services. We have more schools but less learning. We have the national forestry authority but with no forests and a planning authority but no planning yet there are areas of mutual interest,” Muvawala observed. .
