Finance PS Ggoobi urges timely salary payment

KAMAPALA - Finance ministry permanent secretary and Secretary to Treasury Ramathan Ggoobi has urged all government accounting officers to pay salaries, pensions and gratuity on time.

Ggoobi says the accounting officers should make the payments by the 28th day of every month as per the approved salary scale.

He made the appeal while briefing the media at the ministry headquarters in Kampala, over releasing shillings 17.18 trillion to cater for government expenditures for the months of July to September.

Ggoobi said the biggest chunk of the release, amounting to shillings 2.2 trillion, is to cater for wages and salaries of civil servants across governments.

“In order to eliminate the accumulation of domestic arrears and penalties, Accounting Officers are directed to prioritise payment of service providers on time. Accounting Officers should stick to the requirement of not committing government without a sufficient budget,” Ggoobi said.

He said shillings 482.7 billion has been released to cater for pension and gratuity, and warned accounting officers against delayed payments of the pension.

Ggoobi said the works ministry has been given a total of shillings one trillion, of which shillings 942.9 billion is payment of contractors.

Speaking to New Vision Online, works ministry permanent secretary Bageya Waiswa said the Government at the time of merging Uganda National Roads Authority owed contractors shillings 1.6 trillion.

However, the finance ministry released shillings 500 billion in the last quarter of the financial year 2024/25 to clear part of the debts, bringing the total release currently to 1.44 trillion.

“If all the shillings 942.9 billion is released, it will be a big relief, but there’s interest which keeps accumulating. By the time we finish the quarter, the debt will have again skyrocketed,” Bageya said.

The Ministry of Finance has also released shillings 468.7 billion to the Electoral Commission for election preparatory activities.

Ggoobi told the media that for this quarter, much of the money is released to cater to pre-election activities and general services.

“The biggest amount of money we have released is to cater for election preparations. This is why we have released more money to the Electoral Commission and other government agencies that are involved in ensuring the election is conducted in a peaceful manner,” Ggoobi said.

To keep Ugandans safe during election, Ggoobi said, the Uganda Police Force and Ministry of Defence have been given shillings 130.7 billion and shillings 719 billion, respectively.

Uganda Prisons Service shillings 87.1 billion, Internal and External Security Organisations have been allocated shillings 39.2 billion and 86.9 billion, respectively.

The first quarter total release represents 23.7% of the total national budget of shillings 72.3 trillion passed by Parliament in May 2025.

State of the economy

On the state of the Economy, Ggoobi said the economy has continued to exhibit resilience and sustained growth in spite of the global uncertainties like trade wars, international conflicts, among others.

He said during the first three quarters of the just concluded Financial Year, growth averaged 6.9% on the account of Government expenditure in Parish Development Model (PDM), growth in fixed capital formation, recovery in household expenditure and growth in investments and exports.

Uganda’s total export earning

Ggoobi said the country’s export earnings have continued to grow from $1.9 billion (shillings 6.8 trillion) recorded for the Third Quarter of the financial year 2023/24 to $2.6 billion (shillings 9.3 trillion) in the Third Quarter of Financial year 2024/25, translating to a growth of 39.1%.

He attributed the growth to improved volumes and international prices of some export commodities such as coffee and cocoa, which more than doubled between the two quarters.