Ideas generated from the five breakfast policy series that were held in the months of July and August are going to be submitted to the cabinet, Prof. Pamela Mbabazi, the chairperson of the National Planning Authority (NPA) has said.

The ideas were generated so as to form the National Development Plan (NDP) III, which is expected to come into force by September this year. It's coming to replace NDP II which expires in 2020.

On Thursday last week, the last breakfast series was held at Serena Kampala Hotel with a spirited discussion examining possible funding options to generate the much-needed resources to implement national priorities identified in the plan.

After the discussions, NPA started the process of formulating the first draft of the plan. Mbabazi said that after submitting the draft to the cabinet, additional consultations culminating into a high-level forum to further reflect and make input to the proposed plan will be held.

The policy series was organised by NPA and the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP). Participants were from government, United Nations agencies, development partners, the academia, civil society and the private sector.

In the discussions, the participants observed that government requires substantial investments in critical sectors such as health and education, environmental protection, infrastructure, clean and affordable energy, rural development, peace and security, and actions to tackle climate change.

To achieve these development aspirations, they suggested that Uganda develops appropriate financing strategies, minimise wastage, and be more efficient across all government ministries, departments and agencies.

Under the theme Towards Integrated Financing of the NDP III, the fifth and final dialogue built on the success of the earlier four breakfast policy series that focused on; Human Capital Development, Enhancing Value Addition for Inclusive Growth in Uganda, Good governance and Mainstreaming Cross-cutting Issues, respectively.

Speaking during the final breakfast policy series, El-Khidir Daloum, the Acting UN Resident Coordinator, noted that while Uganda has made strides in implementing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), challenges remain in the areas of reducing poverty, sustainable urbanization, affordable and clean energy as well as good governance and effective partnerships.

"The third National Development Plan should identify high-impact interventions with appropriate financing to accelerate progress towards achieving the goals," he said.

He added that Uganda needs policy and institutional reforms to create an enabling environment for effective resource mobilisation and investments.

Effective utilization of resources

Daloum also underscored the need for effective utilisation of resources and accountability through the strengthening of systems to guarantee value for money and rationalising the use of existing financial resources to fully optimise such resources.

His suggestion resonated with proposals generated during the earlier breakfast policy series calling for formulation of appropriate planning, financing and implementation framework for the new plan.

Dr Joseph Muvawala, the executive director of the National Planning Authority (NPA), called for deepening of the planning culture.

"For so long, we have used the budget as the plan, we need to go to the basics and use the plan as the basis for the budget," he said.

He added that the NDP III is informed by the challenges encountered and lessons learnt during the implementation of the first and second National Development Plans.

Realigning government priorities

Other participants called for a realignment of government priorities across ministries, departments and agencies at the planning, implementation and resource allocation levels.

Dr Tom Okurut, the executive director of National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), a government body responsible for coordinating, monitoring, regulating and supervising environmental management in the country, said that their previous calls for a review of the taxation regime with a view of exempting gas cylinders to reduce demand for wood fuel which exerts pressure on natural resources like forests and subsequently stems the effects of climate change, have not been heeded.

A discussion on financing was key because findings of the mid-term review of the second National Development Plan showed that implementation of some of its aspirations was in part hampered by funding constraints.

The funding options for the NDP III suggested during the discussions include; effective development cooperation, macroeconomic stability, domestic revenue mobilization, domestic and external borrowing and aligning of civil society organisations' budgets to the national plans and local governments' priorities.

Others are the use of infrastructural bonds, development of secondary market infrastructure, effective use of pension funds, effective use of public-private partnerships and productive use of remittances for development.

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Vision Reporter

Journalist @New Vision