Uganda’s Secretary to the Treasury, Ramathan Ggoobi (pictured) has provided “the facts about the Shs 300 billion alleged to have been allocated to Roko (Construction Company)”.
Ggoobi was responding to Dr. Ayume Charles’s remarks.
“Interesting debate by both sides of the house today. But the omnibus decision to reverse the 750bn budgetary allocation across all sectors also affected the procurement of 80 ambulances for MOH and to me this is mind boggling. In need to put my head in a bucket of ice tonight,” said Ayume on his X handle.
In response, Ggoobi said: “ First of all, there had been an “over cut” of Treasure Operations budget for item code 242003. The budget was Shs 256.2 billion, but Shs 300 billion had cut!”
He explained out of the Shs256.2 billion, Shs 200 billion was payment for Bank of Uganda (BoU) bank charges for managing Government of Uganda (GoU) accounts of all entities i.e. to enable GoU pay out the Shs 72 trillion in the budget, plus payment of government securities.
He added that Shs 56.2 billion was payment for the shares GoU acquired in Roko Construction Company, as approved by Parliament in July 2022.
“Roko has contracts worth Shs 1.4 trillion including Parliamentary Building. Government invested in it to complete these contracts and get back to life, after which Roko will buy back the shares. At the end of the day, Uganda’s biggest construction company and hundreds of jobs have been saved,” Ggoobi said.
He added that URA is collecting more tax revenue and the larger economy is benefiting from a positive multiplier effect.
“More strategic local companies have been supported. That’s economics that works,” he said, adding: “By the way, the budget already had substantial amount of money for buying ambulances, building and equipping health centers, hospitals and referrals, schools etc. as presented in the budget speech.”
