Aid cuts unjustified, says Nsibambi

By Mary Karugaba

THE donors do not have justifiable reasons for cutting aid to Uganda, Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi said yesterday.

“The reasons these people (donors) are giving are very weak. They talk of the independency of the judiciary, the press freedom, the transition process, who doesn’t know that the judiciary makes independent decisions and government abides by them?

“You (journalists) abuse us everyday and we don’t arrest you but answer you back. I think they have other reasons which they are not giving us,” he said.

Talking to journalists at parliament on the recent budget support cuts, Nsibambi said, “Some of these donors have hidden interests but they should let us run our own affairs. We have had more difficult things than this, but haven’t we managed?”

But he said the cut should teach Ugandans to raise enough revenue to manage their own budget.

Britain, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Ireland are some of the donor countries that have withheld their aid to the country, citing among others things the detention of opposition leader Col. Kizza Besigye.

Information state minister Nsaba Buturo said, “Those are the perils of aid dependency. But our mind is set on changing the status of Uganda in the way we see it but not according to the international community’s way.”