|
Citizen Posts
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Today Uganda just like the other East African states presented it’s National Budget of the financial year 2024/25. The budget speech delivered by Uganda’s long serving Minister of Finance Planning and Economic Development Matia Kasaija, Uganda will spend a Shs72 trillion of which Shs32trillion going into debt repayment with URA projected to collect Shs32.3trillion.
The Uganda Revenue Authority has severally failed to hit the Revenue collection targets like it failed to collect the target of Shs29trillion in the financial year of 2023/24 and has only managed to collect a historical Shs25.2trillion surpassing the revenue collection target of 2022/23 by Shs57.48billion. This means the government will borrow more to fix the deficits.
ADVERT: FOR THE BEST WEB HOSTING, WEB DESIGNS AND DOMAIN NAMES, CALL OR WHATSAPP +256758201313
According to the Ministers of Finance Njuguna Ndung’u of Kenya, Mwigulu Nchemba of Tanzania, Matia Kasaija of Uganda and in Comparison, Kenya being East Africa’s biggest economy presented a budget of USD31billion (KES3.9 trillion), Uganda will spend USD19.2billion (Shs72 while Tanzania will spend USD18.9billion (Tshs49.3 Trillion), and Rwanda will spend USD1.9billion (Frw5690.1 billion).
All the other budget speeches of Kenya and Tanzania took place in their respective parliament save for Uganda’s which happened at Kololo Independence grounds. President Museveni in his Budget speech emphasized wealth creation through Industrialization, Commercialized Agriculture, ICT and Services.
He once again renewed his strong stance on corruption and urged judiciary to handle such matters expeditiously without fear or favor and advised on the bailable cases. However, while elaborating on the same, the president hinted at the ongoing issues of parliamentary commissioners where he said he doesn’t want to be involved in their issues but for him he’s fighting corruption.
His statement comes at a time when MPs led by Lwemiyaga County legislator Theodore Ssekikubo are collecting signatures to censure the four commissioners of parliament Mathias Mpuuga, Solomon Silwany, Esther Afoychan and Prossy Akampurira whom they accuse of shairing Shs1.7billion amongst themselves as service awards.
The censure motion suffered a huge blow when the Government Chief Whip Denis Hamson Obua ordered all NRM MPs not to dare sign the censure motion or face the consequences. He said NRM MPs should wait for guidance from the president in order to sign or not. But going by the president’s statement regarding the same, seems it’s in the discretion of the NRM legislators to decide what they think is right not to wait for him to direct them.
“Corruption is very dangerous, don’t involve me in your struggles with the Commissioners, that is another matter, but it is corruption”- Museveni said
Experts however believe that could the Censure motion make it to parliament, it will be a spark on the debate about corruption in parliament where even three legislators Cissy Namujju [Lwengo District], Yusuf Mutembuli [Bunyole East] and Paul Akamba [Busiki county] are remanded at Luzira prisons until tomorrow 14th June when they will appear for their bail hearing.
The three are accused of soliciting a 20% from the enhanced budget of the Uganda Human Rights Commission via the commission chairperson Marian Wangadya at a meeting they held at Hotel African in early May.
If you have a story in your community or an opinion article, let’s publish it. Send us an email via citizenposts24@gmail.com or Follow our WhatsApp Channel HERE and our Telegram Channel HERE to see more of our Stories.
