Government has been praised for passing a budget that is more focused on developing its human capital.
Dr Ronett Atukunda, the head of the economics department at MUBS says she was pleased that the 2023/24 budget put emphasis on people’s health and welfare as well as boosting household incomes.
In the budget presented by Finance Minister Matia Kasaija on Thursday, up to Shs. 2.2 trillion was allocated to food security, irrigation, climate change mitigation, value chain development, agricultural research and disease control, among others.
The new Parish Development Model (PDM) alone received Shs. 1.1 Tn
Dr Atukunda said that unlike previous budgets, the Government was this time, “putting its money where its mouth is.”
“I am happy to see that the government is trying to get more Ugandans in the money economy,” she said.
“This is the right thing to do…to invest in the people because these people need to eat and get treated. You cannot milk a cow without feeding it. I believe that in that regard the government has put its money where its mouth is,” she said.
Speaking on Friday at a budget breakfast meeting organized by Ernst & Young (EY Uganda), Dr Atukunda said more allocations in areas such as commercial agriculture would have gone a long way, if it weren’t for the country’s debt-constrained budget.
Muhammad Ssempijja, the EY Uganda team leader blamed the small allocations in key sectors, on the bloated government administration.
He noted that the country is hemorrhaging a lot of resources to maintain an unnecessarily huge number of workers especially in the Executive and Legislature.
“Decades ago we used to have a few ministers and administrators but now when you look at the cabinet, you have so many ministers and ministers of state, with big vehicles and guards, they are consuming a lot,” he said.
“Our parliament is almost the same size as that of the UK, whose GDP is 65 times more than that of Uganda. But we don’t want to be left behind, we chase them on the number of administrators.”
Worse still, Ssempijja said that the government administrators when determining the budget, they first consider themselves, and that in the end the key sectors are left to suffer.
“It is like cooks are eating the food themselves,” he said.
Giving a private sector perspective, MTN Uganda CEO Sylvia Mulinge praised the government for its focus on digital transformation in the budget.
She said that only through digital transformation, will government be able to attract more Ugandans into the money economy and see progress on the National Development Plan III