The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee has suggested that State House should budget for the money donated by the president rather allowing unplanned expenditures that come as a result of the donations that the president makes, to avoid the problems it incurs in giving proper accountability on the expenditure of funds that are allocated to statehouse every year.

President Yoweri Museveni

Though State House is relatively well funded institution in Uganda, it has been one of those institutions that runs back to Parliament almost each and every other year for supplementary funds and at moment has domestic arrears of about 2.1 billion shillings.

The Chairperson of the committee Nandala Mafabi has told Parliament that one of the reasons why State House is ever running back to Parliament for supplementary is because of such aspects like the donations that the president gives and are not budgeted for.

Mafabi says since the money that Parliament allocates to statehouse is public cash Statehouse should account and budget for all the money that it gets from Parliament including donations.

The Statehouse Comptroller Lucy Nakyobe says on the other hand that it is hard to budget for donations that the president makes because he makes these donations based on his discretion and given that he has such discretionary powers under the law as the fountain of honor there is little that State House can do about these donations.

Though a relatively smaller institution than agriculture for example, Statehouse operates on bigger budget than even some sectors of the economy and some people have blamed it for extreme extravagancy in the way in which Statehouse spends the money it gets to finance its programmes as an institution.

This year statehouse has been allocated funds amounting to 58 billion shillings.

By Zakaria Tiberindwa, Ultimate Media