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President Yoweri Museveni has signed the reconsidered Appropriation Bill, 2024 into law, authorizing the expenditure of government funds.
The Presidential Press Unit said in a statement that the President gave his assent to the enacted Bill yesterday evening.
"The Bill signed into law is the Appropriation Act, 2024 (Reconsidered)," the brief statement, which was released by Faruk Kirunda, the deputy press secretary to the President, said.
On Tuesday, Parliament met in a special session and reconsidered the Bill, a few days after the President had returned it, taking issue with Parliament over several amendments it had made to it.
In amending the Bill, Parliament reallocated sh750b, to which the President objected to giving assent.
In the earlier passed sh72.136 trillion budget for 2024/2025, MPs had allocated this money to areas they described as critical, which included the procurement of ambulances, maintenance of bridges, construction of sub-county headquarters, and support to families with income-generating projects, among others.
While reconsidering the returned Bill, Speaker Anita Among read the President’s letter, which highlighted the issues for his rejection of the Bill. She said the President cited what he described as indiscipline in budgeting, sabotage of national priorities, and corruption among MPs.
The Bill, which initially sought to authorize public expenditure from the Consolidated Fund, was first passed on May 16 and later sent to the President for approval on May 31.
During the consideration of the Bill, the House, for instance, made amendments that suppressed the Treasury Operations budget by over sh400b.
The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Ramathan Ggoobi, said on Wednesday that Parliament’s reallocation of the sh750.47b had resulted in an “over cut” of the Treasury Operations budget.
“First of all, there had been an ‘over cut’ of the Treasury Operations budget for item code 242003. The budget was sh256.2b, but sh300b had [been] cut!” he said.
Ggoobi explained how sh256.2b was allocated, saying sh200b was for payment for the Bank of Uganda charges for managing the Government accounts of all entities to enable the government to pay out the sh72 trillion in the budget and payment of government securities.
He also said sh56.2b was allocated for payment of the shares the Government acquired in Roko Construction Company, as approved by Parliament in July 2022. Ggoobi, who is also the country’s Secretary to the Treasury, said that the Government invested in ROKO to enable it to complete projects worth sh1.4 trillion.
“Roko has contracts worth sh1.4 trillion, including the Parliamentary Building (the new nine-floor building that will host a chamber with the capacity to seat 600 MPs). The government invested in it to complete these contracts and get back to life, after which Roko will buy back the shares,” he said.
He said this on X, formerly Twitter, while giving what he called “the facts about the sh300b alleged to have been allocated to Roko”.
He noted that at the end of the day, Uganda’s biggest construction company (Roko) and hundreds of jobs will have been saved.
