KAMPALA, UGANDA: A section of local government accounting officers from Acholi sub-region have attributed delays in submitting their budget estimates for FY2022/23 to system errors on the Ministry of Finance Programme Budgeting System [PBS] software.
This comes days after the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development Ramathan Ggoobi revealed last week that only 66 out of 110 accounting officers submitted their respective budget estimates for FY2022/23.
In a July 7th 2022 letter to all Local government accounting officers, Ggoobi threatened to cancel the appointments of 110 accounting officers for breaching the statutory deadlines for effective commencement of the budget for FY2022/23 for local government votes.
“As such, this ministry cannot issue quarter one expenditure limits for FY2022/23 and this is delaying commencement of the budget execution and shall delay service delivery including payment of salaries,” Ggoobi’s letter reads in part.
In Acholi sub-region, local governments that failed to submit their budget estimates include Gulu City, Amuru, Omoro, Kitgum Municipality, and Nwoya District. But Gulu City Clerk Isiah Tumwesigye told URN in an interview on Tuesday that the delays weren’t a personal omission but rather the system challenges they encountered while uploading the budget estimates on the program budgeting system [PBS].
Launched in October 2016, PBS is an online system that is used by all Ministries, Agencies, and Local Governments, among others for the submission of budget reports, work plans, procurement plans, and performance contracts.
Tuwmesigye says the city council approved its budget of 50.7 Billion Shillings for FY2022/23 late last month but their attempts to upload the details on the Finance Ministry budget system proved futile. He says the challenge was beyond their control.
He notes that there was no way they would delay submitting the budget, which had already been approved by the council hadn’t it been for the errors encountered.
Thomson Obong, Amuru Chief Administrative Officer, says that although they managed to submit their budget estimates early, there were no officials to approve them. Obong says the district submitted its budget of Shillings 28 billion on Monday last week but it coincided with a day when Ministry of Finance officials had gone for a retreat.
“We had actually submitted our budget in time but the problem is that the officials were not in the office, but when they came back, they approved the budget,” he says.
Obong also noted that PBS is giving a lot of challenges to accounting officers in the Local government, arguing that even when sometimes they are assisted by a team from Finance Ministry, the system doesn’t respond swiftly.
But the Finance Ministry spokesperson, Jim Mugunga says it’s hard to believe statements on system errors yet the accounting officers had other options to alert the ministry of the challenges they encountered. He also noted that it was illogical to make frantic attempts to upload the budget at the last minute and later give excuses about system errors.
“If you experience challenges uploading you would take alternative measures of making sure that something is on record, that you are having challenges. You can’t say because you had challenges then you did nothing, I don’t believe it,” said Mugunga.
The Minister of Local Government, Raphael Magyezi however recently disagreed with Ggoobi’s decision to sack the accounting officers, saying that there was a need to investigate why they delayed submitting budget estimates.
“I don’t agree with him on such an action, before he takes such an action, you find out what happened,” Magyezi told journalists in Kampala while responding to Ggoobi’s threats of sacking accounting officers.
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