House fails to realign trade, tourism budgets
Government has over the years made it a habit to table supplementary budgets before Parliament every financial year to finance recurrent expenditure. Photo / File
What you need to know:
- The meeting that was convened on Thursday to rework allocations in the budgets of the two ministries stalled after lawmakers were not furnished with a detailed breakdown on how the funds should be reallocated.
The Parliament Committee on Trade has failed to re-align activities of the Trade and Tourism ministries, fashioning a possible pain point in the consideration of the 2024/2025 budget estimates.
The meeting that was convened on Thursday to rework allocations in the budgets of the two ministries stalled after lawmakers were not furnished with a detailed breakdown on how the funds should be reallocated.
The said changes were, according to a junior Trade minister, occasioned by a Shs2.7 trillion cut across all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in the 2024/2025 National Budget that was last month tabled before the House. The monies that will be slashed across the MDAs are reportedly meant to cushion the government against a soaring debt burden.
“On April 3, 2024, the Ministry of Finance communicated budget cuts to several MDAs and the Tourism MDAs were not spared. Total cuts across the MDAs amounted to Shs2.776 trillion and resulted from the gaps created by the increase in the debt servicing costs and reduction in budget support from development partners,” Minister Martin Mugarra said.
The request to realign budgets of the two ministries failed to make any headway after Mr Mwine Mpaka, the committee chairperson, sent out the entities to furnish the committee with a detailed report on how the adjustments were meant to be made.
Issue
“Ministry of Trade is going to have a budget cut of around Shs62b and the Ministry of Tourism is going to have a budget cut of Shs16b. Uganda National Bureau of Standards [will have] Shs2.6b, whereas Uganda Tourism Board is also going to get a budget cut of around Shs11b,” Mr Mpaka said.
He added: “So, we invited them here to give us the costs of their work plans. We want to understand, if it is a workshop how many people are going to attend the workshop, how much you are giving each person so that when we appear before the Budget Committee, we can ably defend and where we can’t defend, we will concede and that money is reallocated somewhere else.”
Speaking to Saturday Monitor in the aftermath of the failed meeting, Mr Mpaka indicated that the insistence by the committee to fetch a detailed statement on required adjustments was chiefly to minimise the possibilities of abuse of taxpayers’ money.
“We have realised that sometimes you take it for granted, and when you ask for costs, they can’t defend the costs so we want to be on the safer side to defend the money before the Budget Committee to ensure we get no leakages,” Mr Mwine said.
The House committee is required to implement the said changes and capture the same in its report. The report will be presented before the House committee on budget. It is out of the committee reports that the budget committee will flesh out priority areas to feed into a final report that will be tabled before a plenary sitting that is yet to be communicated.
