By Stephen Kalema
The Justice Catherine Bamugemereire -led Commission of Inquiry into land matters has been allocated Shs18b to keep running.
The money is part of a budget of Shs446.92bn approved by Cabinet.
Last month, Justice Bamugemereire complained that the commission was underfunded and was not considered in the budget allocation.
“We aren’t part of the budget processing. We are an afterthought which is a hard thing for the commission. We would like to be everywhere but we have been resource stranded for the last month,” said Bamugemereire during the opening of inquiry in Kampala last month.
However, on Tuesday while at Uganda Media Centre, the State Minister for Finance David Bahati confirmed that Cabinet has adhered to Bamugemereire’s cry.
“We have allocated over Shs18bn for the land commission of inquiry in our supplementary budget,” said Bahati.
Shs64bn is to cater for the compensations and shortfalls from external financing projects such as paying off land owners for Standard Gauge Railway. The other money, according to Bahati, is to cater for the Local Governments.
“In the past budget, Local Governments underestimated their local revenue so we had to allocate them money so that they run their services without hindrances,” Bahati said.
Meanwhile, Bahati confirmed that Uganda’s debt sustainability is at 40.6 per cent and is the most promising in all East Africa countries.
“We are not doing bad and in our debt sustainability and we are strongly borrowing with consciousness. We cannot drag Uganda in problems that is why in the last budget we allocated Shs7trillion to finance debts.”
Bahati confirmed that money borrowed is for specific projects and is approved by the Parliament.
A total budget of Shs29.274 trillion was approved for the financial year 2018/19. Shs12.744 trillion (43.5 per cent) was meant to be for service delivery excluding budget support, debt repayments and domestic refinancing. Paying interest rates to Local and external loan obligations is projected to be Shs2.7 Trillion which is one of the largest proposed allocations in the FY2018/19 budget.
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