Winners in govt’s Shs1.1t supplementary budget

Two months to the next Financial Year (FY), Parliament April 30 passed a Shs1.1 trillion Supplementary Expenditure Schedule No.2 for FY2023/2024 where over 70 percent of it will be spent on recurrent expenditures, with rest allocated for national development.

The key funding priorities in the supplementary budget include Shs19billion classified expenditures to State House, Shs3billion to facilitate the annual Martyrs’ Day, Shs13.6billion for Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) to cater for wage shortfalls of the city cleaning casual workers while Shs9billion was approved to compensate Uganda police property affected by the Kampala flyover project.

Out of a heated debate, parliament also okayed a contentious Shs578billion government bailout towards Dei Bio Pharma Limited, a private drugs and vaccines manufacturing company owned by businessman Mathias Magoola.

A total of Shs726 million will be shared by three health facilities; Hoima Regional Referral Hospital (Shs116m), Jinja Regional Referral Hospital (Shs31m) and the Shs580m approved to facilitate the pending activities in the transition of Kayunga General Hospital into a regional referral hospital.

At least Shs43billion will go to various local governments to enable them meet their contractual obligations while Shs12billion was approved to facilitate Farm Income Enhancement and Forest Conservation (FIEFOC) under the ministry of water and environment.

Additionally, Shs232million was allocated to the ministry of lands, to among others, facilitate payment of outstanding compensation obligations under Ranches Restructuring Programmes.

Other supplementary expenditures are; Shs9billion to ministry of agriculture for Agriculture Cluster Development Project (ACDP), Shs37billion to the ministry of finance, purposely for the implementation of the outstanding Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project (CEDP) activities and a sum of Shs9billion will go to the Office of the Prime Minister to facilitate the pending activities under Development Response to Displacement Impact Project (DRDIP), which is set to close in June 2024.

Although the House budget committee recommended parliament’s approval of the supplementary budget without changes, three members of the same committee, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda (Kiira Municipality MP), Mathias Mpuuga (Nyendo-Mukungwe) and Yusuf Nsibambi (Mawokota South) came up with a minority report against the allocation of  Shs578billion to Dei Bio Pharma Ltd and Shs19billion classified expenditure to State House.

In their report, the trio argued that if another State House supplementary request is approved, it will bring its budget to Shs803billion, a growth of 46 percent from the initial budget of Shs422billion was allocated to State House during the budgeting process in May 2023.

“State House has turned into a bottomless pit; this means in real terms the country is spending Shs2.1 billion per day on maintaining the residence of its revolutionary leader, Shs91.6 million per hour and Shs1.5 million per minute. This is a huge cost for Uganda, where 20 percent of its population is still living on less than a dollar per day,” the minority report read in part.

Referring to Dei Bio Pharma Ltd's Shs578billion request, the three legislators reasoned that “Magoola told the Parliament Budget Committee last year that the project's total cost is about Shs3.9trillion, meaning the government will continue charging the consolidated fund for a private undertaking for a long period at the taxpayer's expense.”

However, after a long debate, the allocations to State House and Dei Bio Pharma Company were, without changes, approved by Parliament.