MPs and trade ministry clash over ministerial policy statement

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Ahead of Parliament's sitting, tomorrow (Thursday, March 26), lawmakers want the Trade Ministry’s policy statement for the 2026/27 financial year tabled afresh.

This comes after Members of Parliament (MP’s) on the House committee on Trade, Tourism and Industry, chaired by Boniface Okot (Youth MP Northern), pointed out inconsistencies in documents tabled on Tuesday this week. The development threw proceedings into disarray and stalled deliberations on the document.

The same came into play on today (Wednesday, March 25), when the committee reconvened for a meeting which was attended by, among others, State Minister for Trade David Bahati and Permanent Secretary (PS) Lynette Bagonza.

“You will notice something very grave about this statement. Even the one that was laid before the house didn’t have the budget for the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) integrated. So, you find there are entities that are existent in one Ministry Policy Statement, and then in another, some of these entities are not there,” Okot noted.

Ministry responds

Responding, David Bahati attributed the mix-up to the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MOFPED), which manages a system that captures budgets and work plans. Adding that the ministry’s input often depends on decisions from the latter. Which at times can delay the submission of a proper document.

“We are waiting for a decision in terms of resource envelope for UNBS, and that decision came very late. That probably explains why UNBS was not captured in the first documentation. The first document and the one online seem to be the same. One that was laid on the floor and one online,” Bahati argued.

Furthermore, he said that they had reconciled this in the voluminous version, had all the MPs been concerned again, save for the Certificate for Equal Opportunities. However, in a bid to salvage the situation, Bahati appealed to MPs to allow him to consult Speaker Anita Annet Among on how they can work around the situation.

“I am exploring an opportunity, maybe, of speaking to the Speaker, and apologise to the Speaker and request that the Ministry lay this document on the floor, tomorrow, since we have the House. And the House has not considered it, I can explain to the Speaker, and then we lay an updated version…” Bahati pleaded.

But lawmakers pushed back, saying that such a meeting, besides offending established parliamentary procedures, would likely portray the committee as having slept on the job.

“Procedurally, it will be indicting the committee in my view. When we receive these documents from the speaker, these documents are laid on the table, and then they are referred to us by the Speaker. Then we sit here and develop a schedule to consider them. That schedule is also shared with the Speaker. If the Minister goes to discuss with the Speaker that there are some inconsistencies that they want to rectify, it will be like for us, the committee we had not seen them,” said Richard Gafabusa (Bwamba County, NRM).

Fast forward, and he added that there is also a need to expunge the misleading documents from the public record to avoid legal woes.

“Whatever window you get, honourable Minister, if you are to lay this document again, then your discussion should consider pulling down the existing document on ALFRESCO (an open-source content management system), because the whole parliament is looking at what is on ALFRESCO and someone can challenge our report based on that,” Gafabusa added.