KAMPALA – The Secretary to the Treasury, Keith Muhakanizi has blamed the perennial budget deficits facing the country on failure by top government officials from taking up his advice on management of the economy.
Muhakanizi made the revelation on Thursday, January 9 while appearing before the Parliament’s Finance Committee where he had been summoned to explain the budget deficits and criteria used to pay off mandamus court payments.
The Secretary to Treasury’s remarks were in response to questions raised by Nandala Mafabi (Budadiri West) and Ssozi Mulindwa (Lugazi Municipality) who questioned the criteria used to pay out mandamus payments.
Muhakanizi explained, “When I go naked, the Ministers get angry. When you increase wages, that is cabinet and President, remember these are powerful people, when you create these permanent structures, like cities. We can’t cry over something you have created. These things are created without my knowledge. How can I manage when powerful people aren’t respecting my advice?”
He also said that the system makes secretary to treasury a powerful man when he shouldn’t be because he shouldn’t be questioning accountability, but he can’t because of supplementary expenditure.
On the court awards, Muhakanizi said that the system was working smoothly until the Ministry of Justice called to have the system decentralized and the Ministry of Finance had saved Shs5Bn but the development came with rumour mongering, “I had capacity of negotiations. Now the decentralization is the crisis of garnishes which you see. When you see these bad roads in Kampala, my suspicions is that KCCA doesn’t have money because all the money went to court awards. It is possible they aren’t working on any problem anymore. Having disregarded my advice, stop crying.”
