Finance Minister, Matia Kasaija
The Deputy Speaker, Anita Among has given the Ministry of Finance one week within which they should table the National Budget Framework Paper if Government is to fulfill the provision in the Public Finance Management Act 2015 that requires Government to table before Parliament the budget framework paper before 31st December.
“As per Public Finance Management Act, the Minister is supposed to lay the budget framework paper latest 31st December and I am urging the Minister of Finance to lay the National Budget Framework Paper, mindful that we are going for the Christmas recess, so we should do that as earliest as possible,” Among said.
Kasule Lumumba, Deputy Prime Minister (General Duties) Office of the Prime Minister informed Parliament that Government would be ready with the budget framework paper next week.
“I want to thank you for reminding us of our obligation, I want to promise that we shall come back on Tuesday and do the needful,” said Lumumba.
It should be recalled that in September, Secretary to Treasury, Ministry of Finance, Ramathan Ggoobi issued the first budget call circular, indicating that the preliminary resource envelope for FY 2022/2023 is Shs.42.980Trn.
According to the Ministry of Finance, Government will implement budget cuts on travels both locally and internally to raise over Shs370.3Bn to finance other activities in the budget.
“To meet the reduction in resource envelope,a cut has been instituted on travel abroad,workshops & seminars across all MDA’s to raise Shs.203.4 billion and one- off expenditures have been removed from the budget to raise Shs.370.3Bn,” read in part the statement.
The Ministry revealed that the Budget Framework Paper for FY 2022/23 will be prepared in context of programmatic planning approach & full alignment of budget to NDP III.
Government reveals that in the next financial year, there will be some new cities that will come into operationalisation and these will join new cities like; Masaka, Mbale, Arua, Mbarara, Hoima and Fort Portal that came into effect in 2020/2021.
The Budget call circular highlighted, “In FY 2022/23,the last five of the new cities will be operationalized and they include: Moroto, Nakasongola, Entebbe, Kabale and Wakiso.Operationalization of newly created sub-counties and town councils remains halted until resources are available.
The Ministry of Finance, on another occasion reevaled that in the coming Financial Year 2022/2023, emphasis will be put on compliance because in the past, all the new tax measures have targeted the same class of people, and this time around, efforts will be put to taxing the informal sector that for long has been shielded from the various tax measures.
Ggoobi said that in the coming financial year that starts in June 2022, the Ministry of Finance and Uganda Revenue Authority is committed to enforcement of domestic revenue moblisation strategy and emphasis will be put on getting the informal sector into the tax register.
“You know tax is something which is very fair, you don’t pay tax if you aren’t making profits. But people haven’t being paying this time around, we are going to ensure compliance instead of introducing because new taxes tend to fall on the same people who are compliant, you are like punishing them fort being complaint, now we want to fish out those who don’t pay,” said Ggoobi.
Ggoobi also said that in the coming budget, efforts will be put on clearing domestic arrears which are currently to a tune of Shs1.6Trn and in the coming five years, Shs400Bn is the minimum that will be set aside in each budget to clear domestic arrears.
In 2022/2023, the Ministry of Finance will allocate Shs555Bn to clear the domestic arrears but accounting officers have been warned against committing Government when there isn’t money budgeted for in the budget for the said items.
