Civil Society Organizations advocating for transparency in Uganda’s budget under their umbrella Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG) have expressed their dissatisfaction over the Government’s decision to cut allocations to key social sectors in the 2020/21 National Budget.
While addressing journalists in Kampala, the Executive Director CSBAG Julius Mukunda said that in the 2020/21 budget framework paper, allocation to social sectors like Agriculture, Health and Education will reduce in the coming budget for the financial year 2020/2021 a decision which may affect Ugandans from getting access to key social services.
“Specifically in the financial year 2020/2021, Government proposes to cut the Agriculture Budget from UGX1,053.55Bn in the financial year 2019/2020to UGX950.615 bn. In the health sector, the Budget will be cut to ugx1.55trilliion from the Ugx2.58 trillion in the year 2019/2020,” said Mukunda.
Mukunda said cutting of the budget especially for Agriculture will affect Uganda’s ambitious target of achieving middle-income status.
He observed that the Agriculture sector is underperforming because of limited resources.
“The sector is underperforming because of inadequate staff and farmers access to technology. If the resource envelope is reduced, the level of poverty will skyrocket due to poor performance of the agriculture sector,” claimed Mukunda.
Aside from the Social Sectors, the government is also planning to reduce the Budget to Local Governments as well.
Mukunda alleged that Local Governments play a big role thus the need for the Central Government to allocate enough resources.
“Most Health units are understaffed and when you cut the budget for the sector where do you expect the Ministry of Health to get the resources to recruit new staff,” wondered DianaTibesigwa, the World Vision Policy and Campaign’s officer.
The Financial Year 2020/2021 budget is projected to reduce to UGX39.6 Trillion from UGX40.48 trillion in the financial year 2019/2020.
BY SAMUEL NABWIISO
