KAMPALA – Finance Minister, Matia Kasaija has Thursday afternoon unveiled the highly anticipate national budget for financial year 2018/2019
With the wave of the sanctioned new taxes on social media and mobile money, Uganda’s total bud-get for the 2018/2019 financial has increased by 13.1 percent to 32.7 billion in contrast to last financial year.
Hon. Kasaija declared that the 2018/2019 financial year will focus on increasing agricultural production and its value chain, as well as enhancing private sector development; intensifying energy and transport infrastructure development; boosting domestic tourism in addition to highlighting oil related infrastructure to support commercialization of oil and gas.
‘Reorienting existing Agriculture sector programmes will spur the much needed transformation as well as adapting new technologies thus reducing the dependence on rain-fed agriculture. Use of solar powered pumps for irrigation will be prioritized to trigger all-year round production,” added Kasaija
This is evident in the allocation of Shs.893 Billion to the Agriculture sector for the forthcoming financial year
The finance minister further acknowledge that this will enable households to improve production and productivity. As a consequence, incomes will rise, new jobs will be created thus leading to sustained growth and development.
He, however, decried the low domestic mobilization with a revenue effort of 14 percent of the GDP, as being low and insufficient to finance Uganda’s development effort. With the new Domestic Revenue Mobilization strategy adopted, he stressed that it will address policy, technical and administrative issues in enhancing tax and non-tax revenue collection upon completion in September 2018 to guide implementation in financial year 2019/2020
Beaming with confidence, Matia Kasaija acknowledged that despite of the increase in the global price of oil this year, inflation remained unwavering – in single digit- with the annual headline inflation projected at the average 3.6%. He attributed this to the increased supply of agricultural output, coupled with sound economic policy management.
In his closing remarks, Minister Kasaija appealed to the country’s leadership at all levels to mobilize and rally the population to seize the opportunity to meaningfully engage in production for their improved welfare and the development of Uganda
