The Speaker of Parliament, Anita Annet Among, has faulted some Members of Parliament, saying that they were sabotaging the budget process. This was after Parliament failed to pass the 2023/2024 budget estimates. 

But the Chairperson of the Budget committee gave assurance that no legislators can frustrate the budget process.

However, the State Minister for Finance, Henry Musasizi appeared to make the situation worse when

He presented new changes to the budget, just hours before Parliament moved to pass the final budget estimates.

This sitting of Parliament opened at 10 am and top on the Order Paper was the processing of the budget estimates for the 2023/2024 financial year.

But Henry Musasizi, the State Minister for Finance in charge of general duties threw a spanner in the works and shocked legislators when he presented another corrigenda or amendment to the budget estimates.

The Hon. Musasizi presented the first corrigenda to Parliament last week on 10th May 2023. This infuriated the Speaker and many MPs who asked the minister to go to his office and return after putting his request in writing.

The Speaker was forced to adjourn the House up to midday to allow the budget committee members to process the newly introduced changes into the national budget. But when midday stuck, the committee was not yet ready to present the report to the Plenary. The deputy Chairperson of the committee asked for more time before the committee can report back to the House.

Hardly had the Hon. Mudimi stepped out than his senior and chairperson budget committee, Patrick Isiagi arrived and made another plea to have the budget estimates presented on Thursday 18th May 2023.

This did not go well with the House, with Speaker Among saying that some Members of Parliament were being used by external forces to sabotage the budget process.

The Speaker then adjourned Parliament for the second time to Thursday morning.

The Speaker then vowed to go sit in the budget committee to foresee the process herself as some Members of Parliament denied being used to fail the process and instead blamed the Ministry of Finance.

The newly presented changes will take the 2023/2024 budget estimates to over 52 trillion Uganda shillings from the original 48 trillion shillings.

Ramson