Legislators pass a 1trillion supplementary budget

Daily Monitor Photo
Daily Monitor Photo
Parliament has approved a one trillion Shillings supplementary budget amidst contention by a cross section of opposition members of Parliament.

The Ministry of Defence will take the lion's share of the supplementary budget with an allocation of 253 billion shillings to cover operational shortfalls in election security, wages, welfare, fuel, medical expenses and classified expenditure. The sector received a budgetary allocation of 1.4 trillion Shillings in the estimates for the financial year 2015/2016.

At least eight billion Shillings has been approved for the Office of the President, with three billion to cater for emergency classified expenditure requirements during the just concluded elections while five billion Shillings is for classified expenditure under Internal Security Organisation (ISO).

About 47 billion Shillings has been provided to the Electoral Commission to cater for short falls under the Electronic Results Transmission System after external partners, Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) pulled out, as well as make full payments for the Biometric Voter Verification System (BVVS).

Police will receive 24 billion Shillings to offset a 5 billion Shilling shortfall in budget for policing during the 2016 elections, operational costs under classified expenditure and payment for procurement of national communication equipment for national security.

A total of 89 billion shillings has been provided to cater for shortfalls in payment of pension and gratuity.

The House however disregarded Section 25 of the Public Finance Management Act which states that supplementary budget must not exceed 3 percent of the total budget passed in the same financial year.

Budget committee chairman, Amos Lugoloobi had recommended that 717 billion is passed as required by law.

-URN