The Deputy Speaker, Thomas Tayebwa, has tasked the Attorney General and Minister for Finance, Planning and Economic Development to expedite amendment of the Public Finance Management Act, 2015 (PFMA), to support programme-based budgeting.
While addressing the House on Thursday, 30 January 2025, while considering the 2025/2026 budget framework paper, the Deputy Speaker cited need to restructure Section 13(4) of the PFMA before the next budget (2026/2027).
Section 13(4) of the PFMA reads that: “The Speaker shall commit the proposed annual budget to the Budget Committee of Parliament and to each sectoral committee of Parliament the part of the annual budget that falls within the jurisdiction of that sectoral committee.”
“The Attorney General made a commitment to us here. We want to realign our committees with the budgeting process, because I one time found KCCA was appearing in four committee meetings at once. This is because we have failed to align our committees with the programme-based budgeting,” Tayebwa said.
He alluded to a report tabled by the Committee on Rules, Privileges and Discipline which proposed the amendment of the PFMA, which he said shall support the amendment of the Rules of Procedure of Parliament.
“When amending the section, we shall also need to amend the definitions of sector, of budget, and all that. So that we come back to our rules and make programme committees. This will eliminate the sectoral committees where MDAs are scattered all over,” Tayebwa said.
“I need, before anything else, the Attorney General to commit us that the budget for next year (2026/2027) will address this, because the coming budget is already read. These are direct amendments with no financial implication, they only need realignment,” he added.
The Attorney General, Hon. Kiryowa Kiwanuka, committed to prepare a draft proposal to amend the Public Finance Management Act, 2015, within one month.
“What we can do, Mr Speaker, is to draft the Bill and forward it to the Ministry of Finance and say, this is our proposal of the Bill, then they can proceed with it” Kiwanuka said.
During a plenary sitting on 05 March 2024, the House adopted a report of the Committee on Rules, Privileges and Discipline on the proposed alignment of the Rules of Procedure of Parliament with the Programme-Based Budgeting Framework of government.
In the sitting, the State Minister for Finance, Planning and Economic Development (General Duties), Hon. Henry Musasizi, said discussions regarding amendment of the PFMA to give legal effect to the Programme- Based Budgeting Framework were underway at the time.
Tayebwa instructed the minister to regularly update the House on the progress of the consultations, urging that the proposed amendments to the PFMA should be submitted to the House within one year.
