_________________________

Parliament has been adjourned to enable MPs to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Speaker of Parliament Anita Among adjourned the House sine dine (without a future date known) on Wednesday 13th December 2023. They are expected to resume after about two months.

The Speaker wished MPs a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2024. The MPs will have a Christmas Party at the end of next week.

The end-of-year party for MPs & staff of the legislature will take place on 21st December 2023. She also announced that the Archbishop of, the Church of Uganda, Stephen Kaziimba will be the main celebrant during Parliament’s Christmas Carols slated for 20th December 2023.

Before the House was adjourned Parliament approved loans for several road projects.

The government initiated the budget approval process for the financial year 2024/2025 through the tabling of the National Budget Framework Paper (BFP) amounting to sh52.7 trillion.

The BFP, and the accompanying certificates including; Certificate of Gender and Equity Compliance, and Climate Change Responsiveness were tabled by the Minister of State for Finance, Planning and Economic Development (General duties) Henry Musasizi during Plenary sitting on Wednesday, 12th December 2023.

Musasizi said that priority areas in 2024/2025 will include; investing in people, roads, peace and security, electricity generation and transmission lines, and effective management of natural disasters.

“The theme of the budget for the financial year 2024/2025 remains the same as the financial year 2023/2024 which is full monetization of Uganda’s economy through commercial agriculture, industrialisation, expanding and broadening services, digital transformation, and market access,” he said.

He added that the sh52.7 trillion budget will be financed through improved revenue collection and controlled borrowing to reduce debt servicing costs while supporting faster socio-economic transformation, among others.

Musasizi added that implementation of public financing, including Public Private Partnerships will also be used as a strategy to finance the 2024/2025 budget. 

Leader of the Opposition, Mathias Mpuuga, questioned the legality of the Certificate of Climate Change Responsiveness, based on the absence of regulations of the Climate Change Act, 2021.

“I do not know whether we are moving well to extract a certificate from a law which has had no regulations since it was passed. I do not know where the Minister gets the audacity to lay a certificate from a law that is devoid,” Mpuuga said.

He said that the Minister ought to have laid the Charter of Fiscal Responsibility, to capture changes made in the 2024/2025 budget. 

“The minister has been elaborate on what they intend to change, what he has not spoken about including matters obtained from the Charter of Fiscal Responsibility. The Minister is not clear whether they intend to make some changes to the Charter of Fiscal Responsibility because if that be the case, he should have laid it here with the BFP,” Mpuuga said.

Musasizi clarified that the Charter of Fiscal Responsibility runs for five years, and it was approved in 2021 which will cater for the next financial year.

He added that any changes will be processed through the responsible sectoral committees.