By George Bukenya
Government has rubbished Rt. Col. Besigye’s claims that she finances payment of President Museveni’s salary and that of other civil service solely through borrowing.
The former leading opposition figure in Uganda made the claim while on a certain FM Radio where he said that government pays civil servants using borrowed funds which indicate that the economy is performing very poorly.
The utterances caused panic to government which led to the calling of the media for an urgent press conference on 22nd October, 2024 that was addressed by the Minister of State for Finance, Planning and Economic Development Henry Ariganyira Musasizi at state owned media centre in Kampala.
However, the Minister rubbished Col. Besigye’s claims saying government is able to finance payment of salaries and wages for all her civil servants using revenue collected by her taxing body.
“ It’s wrong for someone to have baseless claims, that every expenditure government is making now is financed by through borrowing yet in the budget we planned to collect locally a total revenue of UGX 31.9 trillion,’’ Musasizi asserted.
He further explained that,“ government allocates this in various aspects for instance out of the 31.9 trillion mentioned above only 7.934 trillion is spent on wages and salaries for civil servants including the president.’’
External debt repayment and interest servicing take UGX 3.149 and 9.06 trillion respectively as opposed to Dr. Besigye’s claim that all revenue collected is spent on debt servicing.
Musasizi also asserted that pensions and gratuity is allocated UGX 1.128 trillion while other statutory obligations like call for Ministry of Defence gets 3.229 trillion for both operations and development expenditures.
Local government revenue transfer out of the UGX 31 trillion collected revenue by URA gets UGX 293billion, Parish Development Model shs 1.878 trillion, Tourism sector shs289.6 billion, and oil and gas sub-sector sector 920.96. While Ministry of Education was allocated shs.2.497 trillion, climate change mitigation shs 516.78 billion and social protection 565.7 billion.
However he acknowledged that government finances it large part of her budget through borrowing and that account for 48.2% of the overall annual budget but he defended this, that this is for development expenditures specifically on infrastructures that are needed for propelling economic growth and development.
The Minister also made a breakdown of the UGX 72.137 trillion budget were he said that other than the 31.9 trillion expected to be collected locally in the 2024/25 financial year, 1.39 trillion will come from budget support like grants, net domestic borrowing shs 8.96 trillion, Bank of Uganda issued securities will bring to the national treasury a total of shs 7.777 trillion, project support shs 9.58 trillion and rollover shs. 12 trillions.