Budget and Covid dilemma: How did we end up here?

The Shs600b for the multi-sectoral Covid-19 response is less than the Shs2.2 trillion that the government put aside last year.

The action has left experts and analysts questioning the government capacity in planning.

Some analysts signal that the move is a hidden agenda to swindle taxpayers money as it happened last year.

Dr Arthur Bainomugisha, the executive director of Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), told Daily Monitor yesterday: “What we see is erratic kind of planning, they are not being proactive, and they are just reactive. You have to be futuristic in terms of planning.”

“Covid-19 has been around and we cannot just remember and put supplementary budget. We have to prioritise health to protect our people first than anything else. When people are safe, then they can [think about] developing the country,” he said.

Government unveiled the Shs44.7 trillion budget for FY 2021/2022 on June 10 amid concerns from experts that it was largely silent on Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the Budget, human capital development where Health falls was given Shs8 trillion.

From this, Shs5.5 billion was going towards prevention and control of communicable diseases such as HIV/Aids, TB and malaria, in addition to other pandemics such as Covid-19.  

The October 2020 Covid-19 intervention report by the Budget Monitoring and Accountability Unit (BMAU) in the Finance ministry indicated that although resources were given to the Health ministry for Covid-19 response, there was delayed service delivery and procurement of substandard items in addition to inflating commodity prices.

Dr Madina Guloba, an economist at Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), said even after the 40 per cent slashing, the 2021/2022 Budget is not yet aligned to stage a good response against the Covid-19 crisis.

Dr Guloba said the biggest problem with the country is prioritising wrong sectors such as security even when it doesn’t play a central role in the response.

“Can we first put MPs and road construction works on hold and direct resources to critical areas such as improving hospital infrastructure, medical workers and availing vaccines for the population? Or we want to continue with the priority of giving MPs Shs200 million for vehicles,” Dr Guloba said.

“If you see the Budget, a lot of money is still going to security simply because someone [who controls everything] wants the money to be put there,” she said.  The pandemic started last year in March and even before the Shs44.7 trillion budget was passed by Parliament in May this year, health experts such as Dr Monica Musenero, the senior presidential adviser on epidemics, were warning the country about a severe second wave of the pandemic.

The rising numbers of infections and hospitalisations would see the Health ministry announce the start of second wave of the pandemic on May 5 after registering over 80 per cent increase in Covid-19 cases.

However, the Deputy Secretary to the Treasury, Mr Patrick Ocailap, and this week said government didn’t plan for the pandemic because they had not seen the lockdown and devastating effects of the second wave coming.

The Budget mainly focused on areas such as industrialisation and road construction even when it was clear that the health system was not adequately prepared.

Many public hospitals still lack or have limited capacity to handle Covid-19 cases and of the 42,000 beds that President Museveni had directed the Health ministry to establish to prepare for worst case scenario, but only 3,000 had been put in place.