The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Still floating on the crest of the golden victories they scored at the Tokyo Olympics, Uganda Athletics Federation-UAF has budgeted for 5.1 billion shillings to finance its 2022 season and the new strategic plan 2022-2025.
The budget was arrived upon in the Federation’s Annual General Meeting that was organized on the weekend.
The assembly approved the 2022-2023 calendar of athletics activities which includes national and international competitions topped by the World Championships, U-20 Championships, Commonwealth Games, and Africa Championships among others.
In the budget, the UAF publicity secretary Namayo Mawerere made it clear, “the International engagements will take the biggest share of 2.5 billion shillings out of 5.1 billion shillings, according to the estimates endorsed by the AGM.”
In their budget, the Federation’s biggest source of funding is expected to be from the National Council of sports, and the rest of the money is expected to come from sponsors.
“UAF expects budgetary income from contributions from the National Council of Sports (NCS) of 3 billion shillings, World Athletics (WA) 794 million shillings, MTN 422 million shillings, Uganda Olympic Committee (UOC) 255 million shillings, and Nike 190 million shillings, among other sources,” UAF publicity secretary Mawerere said.
While talking to sports federation heads in the 9th National sports forum, State minister for sports Hamson Obua revealed that the Cabinet agreed to increase the budget of the sports sub-sector from 10 billion to 25 billion shillings effective next financial year.
It however remains unclear whether the National council of sports will grant UAF’s budget. On the sports budget, 10 billion is ring-fenced to FUFA, therefore other sports federations share the remaining amount.
According to Mawerere, the athletics federation last season realized only 1.9 billion shillings out of the 2.9 billion shillings’ budget and this was related to the cancellation of some of the activities by the sponsors and the Covid-19 global situation.
However, despite COVID-19 challenges, the Federation managed to pull off a historical landmark performance bagging 2 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Minister Obua also revealed that the cabinet agreed to increase the sports budget in appreciation of the resilience of the sports subsector after registering several achievements in 2021 even with the budget cuts in the sub-sector encountered in the financial year 2021/22.
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