The Minister of Finance, Matia Kasaija (pictured) has defended the Shs7.030Trn allocation to the Security and Governance sector in the forthcoming financial year 2022/23, saying those who are criticizing such an allocation are simply abusing the privilege of living in a secure country, which is different from the conditions the prevailed in the past regimes.
“Can you produce something when people are being killed? The first thing you should make sure if the economy is going to move, if people are going to live a happy life is a question of property and life security. So, if you want to say which is the first thing when we are allocating money, without security you can’t do anything else,” he said.
Kasaija made the remarks while addressing journalists at Hotel Africanna during the workshop on the 2022/2023 national budget, where he was responding to remarks by Moses Mulondo, President of Uganda Parliamentary Press Association (UPPA) who tasked the Minister to explain why a huge chunk of the budget was given to security at the expense of stifling other sectors.
Mulondo cited a report he claimed was from National Planning Authority (NPA) that complained about the failure by Government bodies that the budget isn’t aligned to the NDPIII, citing agriculture, Tourism and industry sectors that have high economic returns on money invested in them, have little funds allocated to them and instead funds are sunk in non productive sectors like security.
“NPA isn’t happy that you are giving resources to sectors that aren’t productive which do not have high economic returns and in this, one major concern that keeps coming up is the budget for classified and in the next budget it is Shs1.9Trn and the other year it was to a tune Shs3Trn. And the some people think this money is used as conduit for siphoning public financing because it is classified, you don’t ask what it is going to do,” said Mulondo
In response, Kasaija said, “You are lucky, you are living in a peaceful environment, bust some of us know what security means. If you want to talk about a highly sensible matter, security is the first. Can you produce anything when people are being killed? My dear friends, I am urging you, the first thing we should do is the issue of property which would be the first thing. Without security anything else.“
In the 2022/2023 national budget, Governance and Security has been allocated Shs7.030Trn of which Ministry of Defence alone has been allocated Shs3.643Trn while the rest has been allocated to other security agencies, State House, Office of President, Office of Prime Minister among others.
In the Minority report to the 2022/2023 national budget read by Ibrahim Ssemujju (Kira Municipality), the Opposition raised concern about Shs2.9Trn in classified expenditure that was requested by Ministry of Defence, and Ministry of Finance approved Shs1.9Trn, yet the same Ministry of Defence also needs Shs240Bn to buy vehicles.
He argued, “We are consumers of defence and security services but would not like this sector to be turned into a bottomless pit for our national resources. Defence must not be turned into a cash cow for some people. We want to be sure that money meant for ordinary soldiers is not the one funding birthday parties for a senior officer.”
The Opposition proposed to have the budget of classified budget cut by Shs1Trn from classified to finance construction of barracks at least for the next four years and further reduce the classified expenditure by another Shs400Bn to finance unfunded priorities in agriculture including buying tractors Shs40Bn, coffee seedlings arrears Shs19.2Bn, cotton seeds multiplication Shs8.4Bn. parliament must declassify our classified expenditure.
The Opposition also raised concern over the current operations of the UPDF in the Democratic Republic of Congo that cost over Shs249M per day and the operations started on 30th November 2021.
According to the Opposition, for the past 170 days, a cost of Shs42.33Bn has so far been incurred and there is another supplementary schedule to a tune of Shs64.49Bn that has been requested for an additional operation for the same Operation.
