The Ministry of Finance has announced that there won’t be foreign travel of government employees apart from the heads of the three arms of government and their deputies as government introduces austerity measures to manage its tight resource envelope .
This means that during the financial year 2023/24 only the President , Vice President , Speaker of Parliament , Deputy Speaker , the Chief Justice and his deputy will be the only government officials whose foreign travels shall be financed from the consolidated fund.
Posting on its official twitter handle , the Ministry of Finance , Planning and Economic Development stated that salary enhancement for public servants has also been suspended by one year . The austerity measures also include the freezing of vehicle purchases for government officials in the financial year 2023/24.
The preliminary resource envelope FY 2023/24 has been adjusted upwards to Ug.Shs 50.8 trillion from Ug.Shs. 47.3 trillion in FY 2022/23. There will be no new borrowing next financial year and this shall continue over the short to medium term and as a result no entity shall receive an increase in the budget .
However , the Ministry indicated that the much touted Parish Development Model allocation of ug.Shs.1.059 trillion will be maintained in the budget for the financial year 2023/24. For sometime now , government ministries and agencies have sought the intervention of parliament following massive budgetary cuts proposed by the Finance Ministry .
Sources said that the budget cuts across government operations have been necessitated to allow funding of the Parish Development Model among other priorities .
To justify the severe budgetary cuts that will even render some on-going critical government development projects almost redundant , technocrats at the Finance Ministry argued that as the country continues to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic domestic resource mobilization is still a big task as business try to bounce back .
President Yoweri Museveni has recently told politicians and officials in government ministries, departments and agencies （MDAs) to reduce on external travels and channel the savings on developmental projects that would economically transform the country.
