Overview:
On Friday, Parliament Watch Uganda, a Parliament of Uganda monitoring tool that provides relevant data and expert insights, quoting Ministry of Finance documents before Parliament’s Budget Committee, reported that Uganda’s support from donors is expected to drop from Shs2.781Trn in 2023/24 to merely Shs28.94Bn in the coming budget of 2024/25.
The Secretary to the Treasury, Ramathan Ggoobi, has hit out at what he described as misleading reports on declining donor support for Uganda.
On Friday, Parliament Watch Uganda, a Parliament of Uganda monitoring tool that provides relevant data and expert insights, quoting Ministry of Finance documents before Parliament’s Budget Committee, reported that Uganda’s support from donors is expected to drop from Shs2.781Trn in 2023/24 to merely Shs28.94Bn in the coming budget of 2024/25.
But Ggoobi instead said the government is reducing borrowing.
“I’ve seen several misleading and inaccurate reports on the economy by this handle. Misinformation about the economy affects everyone. Whoever is behind it should restrain themselves. Budget support is not donations. This was external debt. So we’re reducing borrowing by 2.75 Tn,” he posted on his social media handle X.
According to the State Minister for Finance, Hon. Henry Musasizi, the total debt stock as of June 2023 stood at US$23.7 billion, compared to December 2022 when it stood at US$21 billion. Also previous figures of the public debt recorded in past years indicate a consistent increase in the total debt as evidenced by an increase of 107 percent in five years from 46 trillion in financial year 2018/2019 to 96.16 trillion as at 30th June, 2023.
This comes after the Minister of Health Dr Jane Aceng warned that donor funding to the health sector is expected to drop by 49% in the next financial year.
“I know in your thinking, you are thinking it is the Anti-Homosexuality Act but it isn’t. Donor funding has been going down and I have been presenting this because the donors can’t support us forever,” she told the health committee.
“Actually, recently, we were disturbed when PEPFAR announced they were withdrawing, there was a serious discussion in their cabinet, withdrawing all of a sudden. So the issue here is, we need to be planning as the donors continue to reduce, and they are reducing. And I have already indicated to you that all the money for public health comes from donors, so it is a critical issue,” added Minister Aceng
Parliament is continuing to scrutinize the 2024/25 national budget framework paper.