Gov’t to decentralize payments to departmental level

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT  | The Ministry of Finance has secured technology to facilitate decentralization of payments in departments of the various ministries to ensure that their heads are directly in charge of the spending.

Keith Muhakanizi, the Secretary to the Treasury, told reporters on Monday, that this will reduce cases of mischarging, where money is moved from weaker departments to those headed by connected people politically or those regarded as powerful.

Currently, ministries receive the money as a block and redistribute it according to the wishes of the accounting officers. This has seen money moved from weaker departments, which are left with unfunded projects, to those headed by people regarded as powerful.

Muhakanizi said by the time budget is approved by parliament, ministries and agencies have already thought of where the money should be spent. Diverting it to fund activities of the unintended departments is indiscipline, Muhakanizi said.

He added that they had started a pilot study with the Ministry of Finance and the roll-out of the system would be next year.

Meanwhile, Muhakanizi informed reporters that for the first half of 2019/20 financial year. Meanwhile, Muhakanizi said that 11.23 trillion Shillings (55.9 percent) of the budget has been released. At least 5 trillion shillings has been released for the period of October to December 2019.

As a concern, Muhakanizi said that tax revenues were not performing as well as the government thought they would be. This implies that if it continues, the government will have to borrow more to fund its priorities. He said for the four months to the end of October 2019, Uganda Revenue Authority had a shortfall of 603 billion shillings.

He said this was because the initiatives they had planned to help in increasing revenues like digital stamps have taken long to start. The implementation of digital stamps starts fully in January 2020. Also, Muhakanizi said that the government was expecting money from MTN Uganda new license but the negotiations are taking long – all this means the government is getting less money than it had planned to spend.

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