MPs block Sh92b State House supplementary budget

By Henry Sekanjako

Parliament's Budget committee Wednesday blocked sh92b State House supplementary budget saying most of the items in the proposed budget are not of an emergency nature.

Minister for Presidency Muruli Mukasa expressed worry over the move saying it might affect the operations of state house if Parliament fails to approval the required money on time.

The MPs also pointed out items such as electricity and water whose figures in the budget were uniform in nature which the committee protested.

"This is copy and paste you cannot have figures on water as the same as those on electricity why should you have such a discrepancy in figures," asked Timothy Lwanga committee chair.

He added that; "why should we have electricity and water come as emergencies. These are predictable they shouldn't be raised as supplementary".

The committee observed that most of the items under the supplementary schedule are of a predictable nature that could have been provided for within the normal budgeting process.

However appearing before the committee, Muruli pleaded with the MPs to have state house' supplementary budget approved saying failure to approve it would impact on the operations of the office of the presidency.

"This is a very important budget for state house. It is this money that will take us through until the end of the financial year," he said.

Muruli noted that state house has experienced a shortfall in financing its operations adding that the money is intended to cover state house's operations for the period November 2011 to June 2012. The financial year is expected to come to an end within a period of 5 months.

He added that there was need to have the money approved to cater for the President's travels in and out of the country among other functions which he said are sometimes unpredicted.

"Let us allow the supplementary you may project that the president will travel 15 times and then he travels 30 times. You cannot say the president will not travel because there is no money; he is the fountain of honor," he said.

Muruli noted that; "State house has a very big mandate which caters for the President. We have to make sure that this mandate is fulfilled in a manner that is befitting the fountain of honor".

The committee asked the delegation led by finance minister general duties Fred Omach to go back and reconcile the figures and come back on Tuesday next week.

On February 16, government presented a supplementary budget schedule no.1 to parliament amounting to Sh 215.6b, of which sh161.72b (75%) is for recurrent expenditure, sh25.88b (12%) for development expenditure and sh28.0b (13%) for statutory recurrent expenditure.