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The Minister of State for Finance, Planning and Economic Development (General Duties), Hon. Henry Musasizi, has tabled the Supplementary Appropriation (No. 4) Bill, 2023/ 2024 for first reading amidst concerns from the Opposition about the utilizationof the previous requests to increase budget from Shs51 trillion to Shs52 trillion.

Government has revised financial year budget to Shs52 trillion from Shs51 trillion. This was contained in the corrigenda to the budget for Financial Year 2023/2024 that was laid by the Minister of State for Finance, (General Duties), Hon. Henry Musasizi in the parliament yesterday Thursday 11th May 2023.

Corrigenda provides for details of correction of errors and omissions under the draft budget estimates for 2023/2024 that were tabled by the Minister of Finance on 30 March 2023.

The corrections are as a result of requests by accounting officers in line with Regulation 12 of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).

“The regulation states that an accounting officer of the vote may at any time, before Parliament consider the estimates of the vote make a correction of an error or omission made in the estimates submitted by the accounting officer in Parliament,” Musasizi said.

According to the revised estimates, items that require an increase in resources include, external financing, treasury operations, non-tax revenue and local revenue.

The estimates indicate that government has provided Shs254 billion to treasury operations towards reducing government’s liability with the Central Bank.

Similarly, after review of external financing profile, the draft allocations to projects have been adjusted to Shs8 billion from Shs7.4 billion.

The Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities has received an additional Shs33.3 billion as excess non-tax revenue collected in 2021/2022 financial year.

These funds are expected to cater for construction of staff accommodation, equipment for surveillance, electric fence maintenance and rhino’s translocation to various national parks.

Speaker Anita Among referred the corrigenda to the Budget Committee for scrutiny and called on lawmakers to actively participate in the budgeting process.

“Budgeting process is important to you; this is when you know how much goes to your district and you need to be in this House when they are doing appropriation, which is one of your core roles. We are going to supply on Tuesday, and please be here,” said Among.

Kira Municipality Member of Parliament, Hon. Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda however, faulted the ministry over delayed presentation of the corrigenda.

“It has become a practice for government to present documents relating to budget in the last minute. When you [Speaker] announce that on Tuesday we will supply, they [ministers] come running with the corrigenda making it very difficult for the Committee on Budget to scrutinise because of the times involved,” he said.

Section 14 of the PFMA requires Parliament to consider and approve the annual budget and work plan of government for the next financial year by the 31st day of May.

“Sometimes from these debates, we pick lessons which can help the house in future, and also when the Auditor General does reports, we normally use his recommendations to improve systems and methods of work, how I wish as you have guided, we take this as a lesson and going forward we do things the right way,” Speaker Among said.