Is our budget failing our plans or our plans failing our budget?

Jun 07, 2017

The topic under discussion was 'Uganda's budgeting and planning systems'. It was organized by the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) at their conference Hall, Makerere University.

Is our budget failing our plans, or our plans are failing our budget? That was the question during a budget debate.

The topic under discussion was 'Uganda's budgeting and planning systems'. It was organized by the Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) at their conference Hall, Makerere University.

Corti Paul Lakuma, research analyst at the EPRC said Uganda has a five year development plan yet the budget system is yearly. Lakuma argued there was a mismatch between the two.

Lakuma was one of the key note presenters at the debate. "The budget focuses on the short term perspective for each financial year. On the other hand planning takes a long term view of five years," he explained.

He added that Uganda plans at aggregate level but implements plans at the sector level, and bringing them to speak at the same level is not happening. "We have a good development plan but it is affected by leakages, delays in releasing funds and compensation challenges," Lakuma said.

On financial mobilization he said it is a key bottleneck to the successful execution of Uganda's national development plans.  "We hope our domestic revenues will increase but they do not. Huge arrears are under-minding the budget process."

"We have many needs but not enough money, institutions managing resources are weak. We need to expand the planning team, increase the quality of our plans for the nation." He said many activities of ministries; departments and agencies of government are not well implemented most of them remain at 40%.

He noted some programs like the Poverty Action Fund are not integrated into the national development plan.

He noted that local government get less than 20% of the domestic resources but their capacity to use more resources should be increased. He proposed that returned budget funds should be protected to be spent in the next financial year.

Ezra Munyambonera, senior research fellow EPRC said government should explore more sources to finance the budget.  Munyambonera said the main sources were domestic and external borrowing. He cited other sources of finance like the use of pension funds, diaspora bonds and public private partnerships.

Diego Angemi, chief of social policy and advocacy UNICEF said deeper analysis should be done on the budget and plans. "Don't just look at the budget outputs. We should not only count how many classrooms are built. But what are the outcomes what are the completion rates in schools," Angemi said

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