Parliament has approved the 2018/2019 financial year budget of 32.7 trillion Shillings, after passing the Appropriation Act, 2018.
The house which sat this morning approved 9.4 trillion Shillings as recurrent expenditure, 13 trillion Shillings for Development expenditure, and 10 trillion shillings as statutory expenditure.
A recurrent expenditure means salaries and travelling expenses, development expenditure is for infrastructure, while statutory expenditure is for debt servicing among others.
Members had declined to pass the budget claiming increasing it from 29 to 32 trillion would lead to an increase in external borrowing. Erute South MP, Hon. Jonathan Odur said Parliament should not disobey Uganda’s own laws.
The minority report of the budget committee presented before parliament on Thursday noted that the proposed budget will increase borrowing from 6.77 tillion shillings to 7.73 trillion.
Aruu south MP Odonga Otto also raised a concern that the list of accounting officers reccommended to man the 2018/2019 budget are the same people the permanent secretary Keith Muhakanizi recommended as unfit to handle public funds.
“The budget shouldn’t be passed as long as the accounting officers’ list isn’t verified” Otto argued.
This prompted the deputy speaker Jacob oulanya to direct the clerk to parliament to provide the house with a correct list of the verified officers.
After passing the budget, the deputy speaker prorogued the house to June 6th, congratulating members on the achievement.
