Govt targets 18 programmes in national budget

Government to focus on 18 programmes in 2020/21 national budget as it adopts a performance-based budgeting process.

William Epiaka, the monitoring and evaluation officer at the National Planning Authority said the National Development Plan III adopted a program planning approach that has 18 programmes that are being aligned to program-based budgeting and implementation.

He explained that the program planning/ budgeting aims to: increase coordination, reduce duplication, redundancy, wastage, and enhance synergies (reduce ‘silo' approach), increase sequencing of programmes and sub-programmes and better linkage of resources to results.

Epiaka was speaking at the closure of a public dialogue on the transformation to programme based budgeting under the National Development Plan III (NDP III). The dialogue was organised by the Economic Policy Research Centre and UNICEF at the Kampala Serena Hotel.

The 18 progarmmes are; agro-industrialization, fast-track oil, gas and mineral-based industrialization, import substitution/promotion of local manufacturing, export promotion, harness the tourism potential, provide a  suitable fiscal, monetary and regulatory environment for the private sector to invest, increase local content participation, institutionalise infrastructure maintenance, develop intermodal transport infrastructure to enhance interoperability.

Others are; increase access to stable, reliable and affordable energy, leverage urbanisation as a driver for socio-economic transformation, improve access  and  quality  of  social  services, institutionalize  human  resource  planning  for  the  economy, enhance skills and vocational development

The other targets are; promote science, technology, engineering and innovation, increase access to social protection, promote development-oriented mind-set, increase government participation in strategic sectors,  increase  resource mobilization  for  implementation  of  national  development programmes.

Finally the budget seeks to re-engineer  the  public  service to  promote  investment;  and  enhance partnerships with non-state actors for effective service delivery.

Epiaka said programme based budgeting seeks to improve prioritisation in resource allocation based on performance indicators. "Adoption of the Programme approach by the NDPIII means strengthening the link between the resources provided to institutions and the results stated in the NDPIII," Epiaka said.

He said the planning approach articulated by the NDPIII strengthens the programme based budgeting which government started implementing in the financial year 2017/18.

He noted that the approach was designed to help transform the budget from an output-based orientation to a more result and performance-based approach. He explained that following the approval of NDPIII, focus has since been on linking the national budget to the 18 programmes.

He said local governments are the drivers of service delivery for the people. "Local governments represent the citizens and involve them in determining specific local public needs and how these local needs can be met".

Enock Bulime, a researcher at the Economic Policy Research Centre said the reporting frameworks while implementing the programme based budgeting should be clear and duplicated.

Bulime said in an interview that the new budgeting approach is expected to improve the performance of government in improving the welfare of citizens. Bulime said mindset change for implementers and citizens was critical for the success of the new budgeting approach.

The  cost  of  financing  all  the  NDPIII  planned programmes  over  the five-year  period  is  estimated  at sh360.09 trillion of which  sh21.41  trillion is  contribution  by  the  public  while  sh136.96  trillion  is  private  sector contribution. This means that 61.5 percent of the total resources expected to finance the plan will be from government while 38.5 percent will be from the private sector.