Donors Cannot Reject Budget, Says Museveni

May 15, 2004

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has said only Parliament can reject the budget of Uganda.

By Vision reporter
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has said only Parliament can reject the budget of Uganda.
He was reacting to newspaper headlines after the donors on Thursday refused to endorse the draft budget for 2004/5 prepared by the Ministry of Finance.

“Our budget can only be rejected or approved by Parliament,” he said.

“What you call donors cannot reject the budgets of the sovereign Republic of Uganda,” said Museveni. “What the newspapers could have said is that the Government and donors disagree.”

“Our budget is not for them to approve or disapprove. We get support from them. If they don’t agree, the only thing that they can do is to withdraw their support but our budget will go on,” he said.

“In the event that we don’t agree, we will stand on our own resources. And our economy will develop even faster than it has up until now.”

“Our budget can un-depend on the donors if necessary. We can stand on our own if necessary because that is what we have done in the past when we had serious problems.”

“Finally what you call donors are in fact people who are bringing back some of the resources that they have been taking out of Africa for a long time. In fact Uganda has been the real donor. We lose more money through unfair trade than we get from aid,” he said.

“What I cannot do is to stop thinking and someone thinks for me,” he said.

However, Museveni said he would meet the donors to discuss the details of the budget.

He admitted that the high cost of public administration was problematic and said he had asked the finance minister to draw up proposals to solve it.

“However, some of that high cost is due to our enthusiasm for empowering marginalised people, both in local and in national government,” he said.

He said he would be calling a meeting of the National Executive Committee and then a National Conference of the Movement to discuss proposals on how to reduce the cost of public administration.

He said this was necessary because the whole country would be affected and it might even require constitutional amendment.
He defended the cost of presidential advisers saying that they do not cost much yet they “help us maintain political cohesion in Uganda while we carry out serious reforms.”

On the proposed further increase in defence spending, Museveni said, “We have been underspending on defence for the last 14 years since 1991 when we reduced the size of the army. We cannot repeat that mistake again.”
Ends

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