Govt sets date for 2023/2024 budget reading

The government has set June 14th as the date for reading the National Shs52.7 trillion budget.

Information from parliament’s communication department also indicated that President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni will be delivering his State of the Nation address on June 7th this year.

The budget’s increase came up to Shs52.7 trillion from Shs51 trillion after the Ministry Of Finance Planning And Economic Development presented a corrigendum (additional budget) of Shs800 billion.

Whereas the Speaker of Parliament, Anita Among, had earlier communicated during plenary that parliament would be appropriating and passing the national budget, it was yesterday postponed to today after the budget committee requested more time to scrutinize the corrigendum.

It’s in the same plenary sitting that the speaker temporarily suspended the plenary on Wednesday morning following last-minute budget corrections.

“The two-hour hiatus was to allow the treasury to draft a letter of assurance that the House would not be ambushed with more budget corrections technically known as corrigenda,” she said while responding to the junior minister for general duties in the Finance Ministry, Henry Musasizi.

Musasizi had tabled at the 11th hour a second corrigendum that increased the budget beyond the revised Shs51.9 trillion.

Only last week did the committee scrutinize the first budget review which increased the budget from Shs50.9 trillion to Shs51.9 trillion.

Musasizi told the committee that the increase was because the government had received assurances about receiving external grants worth Shs700 billion and an additional Shs300 billion of internally generated revenue.

The public finance management act requires parliament to scrutinize, appropriate and pass the final national budget before the end of May.

The Constitution, the budget act and the public finance management act give the ultimate authority to determine the allocation of funds in the national budget to parliament.