KAMPALA – On June 14, Uganda read her national budget of UGX. 48.1 trillion for the Financial Year 2022/2023.
Although a number of citizens expected the budget to cater for sky rocking prices of commodities such as laundry bar soap, petrol and diesel, cooking oil and other items like wheat and sugar that has worsened since the second half of FY2021/2022, the government provided no promising solution.
This has drawn concerns of gender-focused Civil Society Organisations including Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), Institute for Social Transformation (IST) and Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET), highlighting key concerns they think have the most bearing on the lives of ordinary citizens, especially women and girls.
In the budget, the government has committed to avail the required 1.059 trillion necessaries to fully operationalize Pillar-3 (Financial Inclusion) with each of the 10,594 Parishes in the country will receiving UGX 100 million.
Parish Development Model – PDM aims at alleviating poverty by improving household incomes and welfare through employment and wealth creation, especially targeting the 39% of households still outside the money economy.
The CSOs commended the Government for the move, however, say that the success of the PDM is dependent on the successful implementation of all the seven (7) pillars.
“Our concern relates to the underfunding / ignoring of other pillars, especially Pillar-5 (Mindset change and cross-cutting issues), which aims to increase awareness, mobilization, organization, and attitude change among the population to embrace progressive social norms and values and take responsibility to improve their own livelihood.”
They are not happy with shs1 billion availed to the ministry of gender for the Mindset Change and Cross-Cutting Issues, out of the requested UGX 16 billion.
“We are concerned that this inconsistency in planning is likely to lead to the distribution of funds to citizens who are unprepared to use the money for the intended purposes, leading to wastage.”
The CSOs showed their dissatisfaction with the 30% reservation scheme for women in PDM, citing the existing demographics (proportion of women to men).
“Though some women (female youth) may also benefit under the youth reservation scheme, this is not currently specifically streamlined and may lead to the gender-insensitive distribution of funds, further deepening the economic gender gap.”
Recommendations:
The CSOs say the Ministry needs to align its priority with the Cabinet on ensuring that adequate funds are allocated to Mindset change programs if PDM is to achieve its intended purpose.
They also want the Government to prioritize “business development services” under pillar-3 to ensure all beneficiaries only receive funds after adequate skilling/training.
On the rising prices of essential commodities, the leaders say it is further pushing women into poverty.
“This Financial Year commences at a time of difficulty for the ordinary Ugandan citizen in the face of a sharp increase in the prices of everyday products. The past year has been marked by an unprecedented increment in prices of essential products such as wheat flour (80%), cooking oil (77.6%), and laundry bar soap (48%). The increment in the price for these essential everyday commodities is especially detrimental to women who spend the majority of their income on household and child care.”
“While we acknowledge the linkage of these price hikes to the global situation that is characterized by shortages and logistical challenges caused by the war between Russia and Ukraine, we are also aware that the prices of locally produced foods and goods have been heavily affected by the price of fuel. Diesel which is used in the majority of heavy transport vehicles has seen an over 55% price increase over the past year,” they added.
They say that the depletion of citizens’ savings has an effect on their own livelihoods, but also on the country’s aspirations to improve its capita income to 1,049 USD in the coming financial year.
Recommendations
While the president emphasized the government’s stance on not utilizing subsidies to reduce commodity prices, the CSOs insist that the government should temporarily reduce the tax levied on fuel, especially Diesel as a means to stabilize prices of essential foodstuffs.
They also tasked the parliament to expedite the enactment of the Competitive and Consumer Protection Bills, to protect citizens from players in the private sector, who are taking advantage of the crisis to unreasonably increase prices.
The leaders also decried the non-prioritization of GBV/SGBV and SRHR financing on the backdrop of lockdown-period child mothers, saying that despite the presence of an elaborate legal and policy framework for GBV/SGBV prevention and response in Uganda, there is an increasing incidence of GBV spread.
The Uganda Institute of Public Health (March 2021) identified 390 SGBV-reported cases during the lockdown with females reporting 326 (84%) cases.
The Police Crime Report for 2021 indicated a slight decrease in prevalence of Domestic Violence (0.74%); rape (2.3%); and child-related offenses (5.8%), sex-related offenses and defilement continue growing (1.4% increment for sex-related offenses; 1.6% for aggravated defilement; 2.3% for defilement).
Furthermore, the absolute numbers even for reducing crimes, are very worrying. A total of 17,533 domestic violence cased were reported, 1,486 for rape, 14,570 for defilement, 8,681 child-related offenses and 16,373 sex-related crimes (87.5% [14,482 victims) of which were female juveniles).
The CSOs say this has a huge cost on the government in terms of lost productivity, treatment and management of victims, and case management.
They say that the government has not invested enough in mindset change programming to eliminate negative cultural practices that drive up these numbers, as evidenced by the 797.54 billion funding gap for the Community Mobilization and Mindset Change (CMMC) Programme.
“The government has also not adequately invested in the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS) to ensure the successful prosecution of these crimes that greatly affect the lives of women and girls. For instance, the ODPP has a funding gap of UGX 11.19bn for FY2022/23 in operational shortfalls in the prosecution of serious and complex cases. These shortfalls in financing for the Police, judicial structures, and responsible departments in Local Government, directly contribute to the dismal performance in ensuring timely justice for victims of GBV.”
Recommendations
These seek a proportion of the proposed budget to be earmarked to enable the Child and Family Protection Unit (CFPU) in Police to carry out its classified duties as per the community needs since its part of the GBV response and coordination structure.
They also want a specific budget code to be introduced where all resources and expenses for VAWG/GBV can be tagged.
The growing debt, its management, and accountability
The report of the committee on budget on the annual budget estimates for FY2022/23 noted that both our Nominal Public Debt to GDP and total domestic debt interest payments to total revenues (excluding grants) was not consistent with the Charter of Fiscal Responsibility (CFR) provisions).
The CSOs leaders say that large public debt stock constrains the Government’s ability and effectiveness to finance the implementation and management of policy initiatives, especially on social services on which women depend.
The country’s debt domestic arrears have consistently grown from UGX 2.57tn in FY 2018/19 to UGX 4.65tn in FY 2020/21.
Although the government cleared domestic arrears worth UGX 526 billion, in the current financial year and has earmarked UGX 400bn for outstanding arrears in FY 2022/23, CSOs say it is insufficient compared to the accumulated debt stock.
Recommendations
They say that the Government should effectively implement critical poverty-reducing initiatives, implement more growth-enhancing spending, and tax reforms that promote investment and revenue mobilization to avail resources for service delivery in an effort to promote socio-economic growth.
According to them, the Ministry of Finance needs to actualize sanctions and penalties for Accounting officers who create arrears as contained in the PFMA, 2015. Such stringent measures shall have to be applied because while funds are annually provided to clear arrears, the level of arrears has perennially continued to increase.
