Water PS decries continuous budget cuts

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of water and environment, Mr Alfred Okot Okidi has decried government's poor funding to water and environment resources, a sector he said is key for social economic development and improvement of quality of lives of Ugandans.

Mr Okidi made these remarks at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala on August 31 during a national dialogue to scale up financing for the water, sanitation, hygiene, environment and climate change to achieve the 2030 agenda.

“Funding to the water and environment sector has been lower than expected over the years. Budget allocation to the sector against the national budget slightly increased in the financial year 2019/2020 to 3.0 percent of the entire budget and in the financial year 2020/2021 to 4.5 percent. It then decreased in financial year 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 to 3.3 percent and in the current budget of financial year 2023/2024 to 2.2 percent,” Okidi shared.

According to Mr Okidi, the current financing requirements of the sector to meet the sustainable development goal targets are estimated at Shs7.6 trillion annually.

Approximately Shs1.6 trillion is budgeted for  water and environment resources, representing 21 percent of the annual requirements. 

“What is approved under the national budget is not necessarily released to implement on the set targets of the sector and it has continually been receiving a small share of the overall budget yet it has enormous tasks to be done to manage and develop water and environment resources and protect the country against the impacts of climate change,” Mr Okidi added.  

Mr Silas Aogon, the Member of Parliament for Kumi Municipality and Chairperson of the Uganda Parliamentary forum of water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) was concerned not only about the differences between what is approved by the Ministry of Finance for the water sector but also the many service delivery inefficiencies in government where the released money is returned to the treasury after budgets and work plans are drawn and approved.

“Are we able to ascertain why this money is returned to the treasury? It is because the government didn’t do proper planning or because it is not ready? Is it because the government is trying to forge a budget without looking at what the money was supposed to be doing? Every money that is returned to the treasury after releasing should be accompanied with a genuine reason for its return because water is a crosscutting issue that affects everybody,” Aogon said.

Aogon also cited an element of budget indiscipline involving many stakeholders when implementing the budget. There are those who release the money, approve, implement, those who account and monitor and evaluate.

“The budget is an act of parliament and it is supposed to be implemented in accordance with the law. If parliament allocates money for water, why shouldn’t it be released as expected? If the ministry of finance is to reduce the budget in the course of implementation, it should come back to parliament whose responsibility is appropriation with a proper justification for lowering the budget. It (Ministry of Finance) must respect parliament and learn to dialogue with parliament if there’s any change they want to make. If you cut the budget after approval, there is a likelihood that you didn’t pass a realistic budget and this affects water and sanitation activities,” Mr Aogon noted.

On her part, the Chairperson of National Planning Authority, Ms Pamela Mbabazi advised that the government needs to devise ways to ensure that the water sector is sustainably financed.

“It should be in the interest, even in the Ministry of Water, to generate and come up with ideas on how to strengthen the tax collection system. We all need to support the development and implementation of long term efforts to mobilise domestic public resources that can in turn be used to strengthen service delivery in the water and environment sector,” Ms Mbabazi advised. 

The dialogue was focused on getting views from a wide range of stakeholders from within and outside Uganda on how funding to the water and environment sector can be scaled up, but also identify innovative financing sources the sector can pursue for the implementation of its programs and deliver on its targets.  

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