The 2016/17 Uganda National Budget Debate In Summary

"Budgeting for Future Generations" was the theme for the 2016/17 National Budget Debate. It centred around three critical interventions; Debt Sustainability, Agriculture and Human Development.  Dr. Sarah Ssewanyana, the Executive Director of Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC) and interim head of Uganda Economics Association (UEA) gave the opening remark. 

Dr. Sarah Ssewanyana: 

Quite often we forget the young ones as we budget. 

Our population structure is wide at the bottom

We have 55% of the population which is below 18.

Gov’t is committed to working smarter for greater impact in our economy

The budget highlights agriculture, tourism and human development

Proposed interventions are mainly around tertiary education (trying to support the new universities). Is this what we really require as a country? 

Proposed financing of the 2016/17 finance budget. Is it sustainable? How about our children and future generations. 

Dr. Joseph Muvawala (Executive Director of National Planning Authority)

Whether the budget is the instrument that will deliver the NDP. 

At the national level, the objectives of the budget and the allocation of the budget are very much aligned. However the devil is in the details. 

At the sectoral level, the budget has serious challenges of alignment. Sectoral alignment for some of sectors couldn’t even hit 40%. Yet at National Level, last measurement was at over 70%. 

It is duty of parliament to have sanctions on sectors that have not been aligned. Growth figures presented are not adequate to achieve the NDP. We should be growing at 7% constantly if we are to achieve middle income status. 

The budget has been good enough to cut on internal borrowing. Yet as we cut on this, we are expanding ministries.

The budget has been very generous to the agricultural sector. However main funding is for inputs. We are increasing inputs without dealing with the institutional bottlenecks. Unless we deal with agriculture as a chain. How efficient is the delivery mechanism? The 500Bn put could be lost through inefficiencies.

Non-concessional financing is increasing. For generational budgeting, effective and fast implementation will determine. As a gov’t we are not doing so well in that area. It is the achilles heel for this government. 

We benefit less per dollar of investment.

For health unless we go for impact, we are likely to miss the target. It is not enough to construct hospitals that have no drugs. Better we construct a few that have real impact. 

Wherever we have democratised primary education, we have lost out on quality. The allocation per capita per child has reduced in real terms. Are you saying that when you increase the teachers’ salaries without supporting the teaching, you will get better results?

The budget ought to be aligned at the sectoral level. 

Should we continue as a country to allow sectors and institutions that don’t have strategic plans to spend as they wish? 

Andrew Rugasira (Good African Coffee) 

1. Orientation of the economy. An export-oriented economy is the ambition of the government. Yet there’s a disconnect with the how-to. It’s not so much about the commodity, it’s about how much value we can extract from the commodity. We have to be competitive in access to capital. There is a mindset shift that is needed by our policy thinkers. 
2. There were 12 graduates in cambodia when the new president took over. 

Ambition alone will not get us anywhere. The challenge is how do we unlock the incentives for small-scale producers? How do we create the conditions that make them more profitable? One of the key issues we have here is property rights. The small-scale farmer can’t generate capital from that asset that he has. How do we create those property rights for these farmers? 

Small-scale farmers are not going to bring the transformation in the rural economy. It’s agri-business that’s going to do that. It’s a value chain. You can’t address these issues in isolation. Distribution of seeds is not going to solve this problem. 

You build a road without thinking of production? You construct a dam without thinking about the users of that energy? No transformed and modernized economy has ever been built on foreign investment alone. It’s been first through incentivisation of the local investors who then partner with the foreign investors? 

100bn every year leaves Africa in tax-evasion related profit repatriations. 

The reason why capital is expensive is because they can invest their funds in treasury bills which are absolutely secure. In every country that has been rapidly grown and was in the same situation as we are now, the government has become the venture capitalist. I don’t know why we are ashamed of that. 

Management and Execution. There should be a convergence with what is right and what is being done. What do we need to do and what is being done? There is an opportunity for priority setting. The actions of govt must be consistent with the economic realities of our country. 

There is a huge role for a voice in civil society, in private sector because doing business is about solving problems.