As Finance Minister Matia Kasaija presents the financial year 2017/18 national budget to Parliament this afternoon, several Ugandans say the budget should have more funds channeled towards social services like health and education and social protection.
In the yet to be presented 2017/18 FY budget, Works and Transport take the highest allocation at 4.8 trillion Shillings, followed by Energy and education at 2.4 trillion, Health at 1.8 trillion and Security at 1.4 trillion Shillings among others.
The "Industrialization for job creation and shared prosperity" is expected to increase to 29 trillion shillings from 26.3 trillion allocated for the ending financial year.
Parliament approved the budget last week as required by the Public Finance Management Act 2015. Like in the previous financial years, Minister Kasaija's budget maintains a big portion of allocations to the infrastructure sector.
Agriculture which employs majority of Ugandans is allocated 863 billion Shillings, while Water and Environment takes 595 billion Shillings.
At least 7.6 trillion Shillings will go towards recurrent expenditure, 11.4 trillion for development expenditure while 9.9 trillion is for statutory expenditure.
But several Ugandans insist that social services like health, access to water and social protection issues should be prioritized by Government.
A one Deus Baguma, a vendor states that health and education should come top on the list of allocations. He says for long roads and works have dominated the budget.
Rona Namono says unlike some people who can afford private health care, many Ugandans don't have access to good health.
A 24-year-old police officer says most money should now go to agriculture looking at the rate at which people are dying of hunger.
Geoffrey Kabanda says money should be channeled towards supporting teachers.
The presentation of Uganda's budget coincides with that of neighbouring Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. Kenya however read its budget last months to allow its Parliament to go on recess after passing the 2017/2018 budget.
The East African countries in 2007 to read their budgets on the same day in order to harmonise their taxation regimes.
