Jinja cuts budget proposal for FY2024-25 

Jinja City Council has cut its budget for the 2024/2025 Financial Year, citing inadequate local revenue collections from property taxes, among other challenges.

Jinja City Council Secretary for Finance Twaha Waniala said there is a budget cut from Shs59.8b in the current FY2023/2024) to Shs54.9b for the next FY starting June.

According to him, the council failed to collect income per the ending year’s revenue projections due to “technical challenges, including the failure by property and hotel owners to take records of their visitors.”

These, he said, cannot be tracked by the finance department.

“Very many hotels in Jinja City don’t register records of their visitors and I pray the government comes out with enabling laws to force their owners to register visitors like it is done in other countries,” Waniala said during the laying of the budget proposal for the 2024/2025 FY on March 22, 2024.

Another challenge, he cited, is the alleged failure by Jinja city to have proper revenue database records, and inadequate resources for revenue mobilisation, explaining that there is only one vehicle.

Departments affected by budget cuts include; roads and engineering, that was reduced from Shs17b to Shs6.5b, natural resources slashed from Shs837.7m to Shs674.7m, community-based services down from Shs557.3m to Shs545.6m, internal audit from Shs360.4m to Shs330.3m and health from Shs8.6b to Shs8.4b.

Departments like education, administration and health are the areas that Jinja City plans to focus on with increased budgets, with the education budget improved from Shs9.5b to Shs12.3b, administration from Shs8.6b to Shs12.4b.

Waniala said there are many challenges that have directly and indirectly affected Jinja City income expectations during the 2023/2024 FY; such that by the end of the second quarter (December 2023), council had only collected Shs25.7b, giving an average performance of 43 per cent.

He further explained that from the budget of Shs59.8b, Shs11b was expected to be collected from local revenue, but by the close of December 2023, only Shs3b was collected. 

Jinja City clerk Edward Lwanga remarked that what departmental heads and councilors should go through and discuss the FY2024/25 budget estimates by May 31 ahead of its finalization.

 Jinja City Deputy Speaker Sirina Kyakuwaire Kamya, who presided over Friday’s council sitting, encouraged councilors to focus on public demands not their (leaders) own interests.