Gulu City Council has passed a budget of shillings 39.97 billion for the 2024/2025 financial year, which is a drop from the current financial year’s shillings 55.78 billion.

This drop according to Caroline Adong, the secretary for finance planning and administration, who made the budget speech during a full council meeting held on May 24, 2024, at the city health boardroom, is due to the cessation of USMID funding, the removal of shs1.700bn from the city's wage bill, and the reduction of other grants under the health and education sectors.

The Uganda Support to Municipal Infrastructure Development (USMID) program, funded by the World Bank-IDA, is designed to enhance the institutional performance of 14 municipal councils so as to improve urban service delivery.

Adong added that the city council failed to fulfil three-quarters of its projection to collect sh6bn in the 2023/24 financial year, instead collecting only sh3.7bn, prompting Parliament to lower its indicative planning figure.

According to the next financial year’s budget, the education department took the lion’s share of sh15.340bn followed by health with sh3.8bn, administration with sh8.27bn, finance with sh1.44bn, statutory bodies with sh1.27bn and production with sh279m.

Meanwhile, the planning department has been allocated sh374m, natural resources sh825m, community-based services sh600.9m, and trade industry and local economic development sh332m million. 

Internal audit was allocated sh184m as the engineering department’s budget was cut from sh27bn to sh6.39bn.

Florence Lallam, the woman councillor for Laroo-Pece North Division however, criticised the city council for failing to broaden its sources of income rather than depending solely on donations from development partners and funds from the central government.