Phillip Adonga, the councillor for Tenam Sub County said that some of the new administrative units face eviction from their rented office spaces due to unpaid rent.
First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for East African Community Affairs, Rebecca Kadaga, Tororo District Woman MP Sarah Opendi and SEATINI Uganda hinted that the taxpayers in Uganda are resentful to taxes because they are not consulted or adequately educated.
The Prosecution alleges that the trio on May 13th, 2024 at Hotel Africana in Kampala solicited from Mariam Wangadya the Chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission an undue advantage of 20 percent of the anticipated Budget of the UHRC for the Financial Year 2024/2025.
The Civil society organisations, including the Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG), SEATINI Uganda (a tax and trade rights NGO), health rights group (CERHUD), Food Rights Alliance, Oxfam Uganda and Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), fear for missed priorities and increasing debt burden.
According to the planned expenditure, 82% of the budget will be managed by the central government, while local governments get 16%, which the experts say is too little to enable local governments operate effectively.
Under the budget, 7.7 trillion Shillings has been earmarked for Human Capital Development; 6.9 trillion for peace, security and good governance interventions; 5.1 trillion for development of integrated transport infrastructure.
Parliament Budget Committee has faulted officials from the Ministry of Finance of undermining the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) provisions while coming up with an additional budget totaling 3.4 trillion Shillings for the coming financial year 2021/2022.
Last week, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija tabled a budget of 41.2 trillion shillings for the next financial year, which was a reduction of 4.3 Trillion Shillings from last year's budget.
State Minister of Finance David Bahati says that the move is intended to streamline the transport sector by getting rid of illegitimate cars and raising money for the maintenance of roads across the country. According to the breakdown, Car owners will pay 200,000 Shillings while motorcycle owners will pay 50,000 Shillings annually.
Although the share from the national budget for Local Governments in 2009 stood at 23.8%, it has been decreasing until it sank to 11.1% in Financial Year 2019/2020.
Abdul Kalemera the Chairperson for District Finance Committee explains that the newly elected councillors will earn less allowances compared the outgoing over projected decline in revenue collections following creation of five town councils which are semi-autonomous and don’t remit anything to district.
The disagreement stemmed from the contention on whether a sum of 900 million Shillings from the budget, should be allocated to the purchase of a grader or the completion unfinished road works in the Municipality.
This follows an observation of inconsistencies in the figures that were approved by Parliament and those presented by the Minister in the Budget speech, brought to the attention of Parliament, by Budget Committee Chairperson Amos Lugoloobi.
Kasaija said that the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) sector saying it has performed well since internet users have increased from 7.5 million in 2016 to 11 million in March 2020.
Parliament's Budget Committee has recommended that the government reviews the National Budget for the coming financial year 2020/2021 after the full effect of the Coronavirus pandemic on the economy are ascertained.
Robert Owagonza, the Kingdom minister for Finance and Planning read the budget before the Parliament at the Kingdom’s Rukurato Hall[Parliament] in Hoima town on Saturday afternoon.
