Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga has called President Yoweri Museveni to reign in on Finance Ministry officials and other ‘lazy’ ministers.
This follows confusion that bogged the 2019/20budgeting process.
While making her address ahead of the budget reading yesterday, Kadaga said that although the Ministry of Finance complied with all the provisions in the Public Finance Management Act 2015, the institution fell short of harmonizing their institution.
“I must express my disappointment in the manner in which this year’s budget was handled. In the first place, the policy statement which should have been with Parliament by 15th March didn’t come on time, majority of them arrived on 19th April 2019 and nine ministries had to be named because of non-compliance,” Kadaga said.
She added: “It was quite disturbing that an addendum to the budget was presented to the House after the Appropriation Bill had been sent to the Committee of Budget. This caused us to sit again to consider the budget, this is very untidy and I hope that the Ministry of Finance will not repeat it in the coming financial year.”
It should be remembered that Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah also lashed out at officials from Ministry of Finance accusing the Ministry of derailing Parliament work by seeking to amend details in the 2019/2020 national budget just eight days before the last day of approving budget by Parliament.
Oulanyah made the remarks last month in which he argued that the practice of tabling corrigendum is a manifestation of financial indiscipline that needs to be checked so as to improve the budgeting process and reduce on the workload brought before the house.
