The Budget office led by Budget Director Sulaiman Kiggundu told committee members that the amount of money indicated as errors and omissions in their accounting was way too high and needed to be investigated.
The National Economy committee of
Parliament is investigating circumstances under which the Ministry of Finance
failed to reconcile money amounting to 666 billion Shillings for the month of
March 2020.
According to a presentation of Parliament’s
Budget Office, to the National Economy Committee, up to 666 billion Shillings was
indicated as errors and omissions, by the Ministry of Finance. This is
contained in a report of the budget office on the Status of Uganda’s
Economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Budget office led by Budget
Director Sulaiman Kiggundu told committee members that the amount of money indicated
as errors and omissions in their accounting was way too high and needed to
be investigated.
“Whenever you add all those
sources, the external source and the domestic source, you find that you have
not arrived at the amount you need to finance the cap, so that difference is
errors and omissions. It should be very small because eventually, you should
find where the mistake was, when it is big, it is questionable,” The officials
said.
They said that the Ministry of
Finance has several times posted such errors and omissions in its accounts,
including, 816 billion Shillings in June 2019, 993 billion Shillings in July
2019, 403 billion Shillings in November 2019, 650 billion Shillings in January
2020 and now 666 billion in March 2020.
The committee chairperson Syda
Bbumba has told URN that the errors are being investigated looking at the huge
amounts in billions of Shillings that appear as errors. Bumba says that it is
unusual that a department posts such errors continually.
Kaberamaido County MP Veronica
Bichetero Eragu says that the figures are worrying, but what is important is that
the errors seem to stretch for many years.
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Erute North MP Jonathan Odur says
that usually, there is what is called mis-posting in finance, as someone can
write 10 million instead of 1 million, but that should be detected and rectified
through balancing. He says this appears to be a well-orchestrated fraud to
steal money.
//Cue in; “And then you…
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Some experts in Finance and
economy told URN that actual money could have been lost, but it might also be
an issue of failure to reconcile their tally.
Alex Otto
Freelancer