National budget increased to UGX 44.7 trillion

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Finance has further increased the budget for the financial year 2021/2022 from the initial 41.3 Trillion Shillings to 44.7 Trillion Shillings.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the increase is due to an additional 500 Billion Shillings for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines and the decision to borrow more money externally.

Last week, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija tabled a budget of 41.3 trillion shillings for the next financial year, which was a reduction of 4.3 Trillion Shillings from last year’s budget.

Kenneth Mugambe, the director budget at the Ministry of Finance says that until the budget is appropriated by Parliament, more changes are expected to happen.

Mugambe was on Friday speaking at a sensitization training for parliamentary journalists on the budget process at Hotel Africana in Kampala.

He says that initially, they provided an estimate of what they thought they required, but the continued engagement with the Executive and Parliament necessitated the increase in the budget. He says that the 4.3 trillion budget didn’t include COVID-19 funding.

The new budget has seen the budget for governance and security reduce from the initial 7.7 trillion shillings to 6.9 trillion shillings.

The addition of 500 billion Shillings to the health sector has increased the funding of human capital development, which covers education and health among others from the initial 6.8 trillion shillings to 7.3 trillion shillings.

Integrated transport infrastructure and services which were 3.9 trillion will now be 5 trillion shillings, Agro industrialization will take 1.6 trillion instead of the initial 1.4 trillion, and regional development has remained 1.2 trillion shillings.

Sustainable Energy Development and Development plan implementation will each take 1.1 trillion shillings.

Parliament and Judiciary which was not initially included in the budget but silently fell under government and security has been allocated 831 billion Shillings and 373 billion Shillings respectively.

Other sectors like climate change, water management will get 668 billion, private sector 587 billion shillings,  Innovation technology development and transfer 344 billion, public sector transformation 325 billion, sustainable urbanization and housing 312 billion shillings, and tourism development 178 billion.

Others are digital transformation, 134 billion shillings, sustainable development of petroleum resources 106 billion,  community mobilization and mindset change 56 billion, manufacturing and mineral development 54 billion and 48 billion respectively.

Under non-discretionary allocations, domestic refinancing will take 8.5 trillion shillings, interest payments 5 trillion shillings, external debt repayment 1.7 trillion shillings, domestic arrears 400 billion shillings, local revenue for local government 212 billion shillings.

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