UGANDA, Kampala | Real Muloodi News | The Ministry of Finance has presented a projected budget of USh43 trillion for the 2022/23 financial year.
According to the Budget Framework paper presented by the Ministry of Finance, next year’s budget will focus on security, the rule of law, and revitalising business activities through the involvement of rural households in commercial agriculture, industrialisation, and market access.
Revitalising business activities will be achieved through Emyooga funding support to SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies) while industrialisation and market access will be achieved through the Parish Development Model.
However, the resource envelope is projected to shrink from 44.7 trillion shillings this financial year to 43 trillion shillings in the 2022/2023 financial year. This represents a USh1.6 trillion decline from the 2021/22 budget.
“It’s a decline because some of the projects have expired and some of the donor support has gone down,” explains the State Minister for Finance, Henry Musasizi.
“But the good news is that on the revenue side, we are seeing a rise. We project to collect more tax revenue than we are collecting this year. And to me that is a positive,” Musasizi says.
USh7.4 trillion is expected to be spent on servicing Uganda’s public debt, with USh2.4 trillion for debt repayment and USh5 trillion for interest payment. What is worrying, however, is that between June 2020 and June 2021, the country’s public debt increased by 24% from USh57.2 trillion to 69.5 trillion shillings.
In the next financial year, the government is looking at reducing public expenditure as one of the remedies for continued borrowing. Freezing the creation of administrative units and rationalisation of government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) will be some of the measures government will implement.
When Parliament returns from recess early next year, the committee will embark on processing the projected budget.
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