Although the agriculture sector has a Development Strategy
and Investment Plan (DSIP), its implementation has been hampered by inadequate
funding and poor linkage between Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and
Fisheries (MAAIF) headquarters and Local Governments (LGs). For instance, in Financial
Year 2012/13 the sector received Shs 379.04 billion compared to Shs 559.6
billion projected in the DSIP, thus leading to a funding gap of Shs 180.6
billion.
The agriculture sector remains among the lowest ranked
sectors in the national budget. Agriculture sector has not received more than 5
percent share of the national budget since 2009/10. The total budget allocation
for the agriculture sector for FY 2012/13 was Shs 379.04 billion which is 3.5%
of the total national budget. The 2013/2014 projection is 3.2% - even if we stretch
to the total direct and indirect allocation to the sector, the total allocation
will not exceed 5% of the total national budget. Either way, the allocation to
the sector is way below the Maputo / Comprehensive Africa Agriculture
Development Program (CAADP) declaration
(target) of at least 10% of the national budget- that Uganda committed to
implement.
Due to low funding, the agriculture sector is facing
challenges, among them are: lack of implementation of the Shs 1.4 trillion
national action plan on poverty reduction and enterprise selection; recruitment
of staff at district Local governments; lack of non-wage budget to implement
the MAAIF structure at headquarters; failure to provide water for agriculture
production facilities; lack of continuous funding for technology development;
and inability to fund 100 farmers per parish under NAADS and evident struggle
to manage devastating wilts like banana bacterial wilt and coffee wilt.
Sadly, looking at inter-sectoral analysis of the agriculture
budget over the last three years, one notes that 60 percent of the sector
budget is allocated to central government agencies and the headquarters.
Despite the fact that Local governments implement majority of the sector DSIP
activities, only 40% of the sector budget is allocated to Local Government’s programmes under advisory services and
production services. Apart from NAADS, there is virtually no other government
funding for agriculture at Local Government levels.
Districts continue to face serious problems in raising local
revenues to support the agriculture and other sectors. For example, Amuru collects
only 0.7 percent of its total budget, Luwero at 1.2 percent of its entire
budget and Nebbi at 3.3 percent! Can these districts marshal capacity to deliver
local specific services especially those in the agriculture sector? The answer
is no. Indeed most local governments depend on Central Government (CG)
transfers. For 2012/2013 Financial Year, average CG grants constituted over 70
percent, 90 percent and 92 percent of Amuru, Luwero and Nebbi DLG budgets
respectively for the last four years. The CG transfers are biased towards
national budget priorities and are largely conditional in nature. This means
local governments lack the discretionary powers to allocate resources and ensure
that peculiar needs of the communities in areas such as agriculture and
livelihoods are executed.
District Agriculture Budget Allocations also show that
agriculture is not among the key priorities of the District Local Government
(DLG) budgets. The share of the production sector (which constitutes
agriculture) to the total DLG budget is less than 10 percent, averaging 6.7
percent, 7.3 percent and 8.4 percent in Amuru, Luwero and Nebbi DLGs
respectively over the last four FYs (i.e. 2009/10 – 2012/13). Apart from NAADS,
there is no other visible government agriculture development program at LG
levels. Yet NAADS program mainly focuses on advisory services, and provision of
inputs; other agriculture value chains such as pests and diseases control,
post-harvest handling and marketing are largely underfunded.
Generally sub-counties allocate more funds in their budgets
towards agriculture compared to the central and DLGs. Over half of the entire
sub-county budget is spent on agriculture related programmes. The higher share
of agriculture in the sub-county budget is more encouraging especially given the
fact that the sub-county is the front-line service delivery organ of
government. The biggest challenge is that the actual amounts are too meager to
create meaningful impact on the agricultural development in the county.
Government should exploit the possibility of establishing an
Agricultural Bank that will explicitly focus on farmers credit needs, hedge against
risks like crop failures and price volatilities of agro-products. MAAIF needs
to enhance its linkages with LGs through recruiting more staff and empowering
the District Production offices. MAAIF needs to ensure that the DSIP is
effectively implements by harmonizing its budget estimates with the Medium term
Framework (MTEF) and annual budgets. Government needs to recruit more extension
staff at the sub county level in a bid to address the inadequate staffing. Government
needs to develop client’s charters between the service providers and
communities/ beneficiaries. Local
Governments both district and sub-counties need to improve on their planning
and budgeting process through involving the key stakeholders such as
farmers. Finally, LGs need to increase
access to budget information through display of budget information on public
notices boards, or announcements on radios and other local media where possible.
The foregoing will tame corruption in the sector and increase service delivery efficiency.
Morrison Rwakakamba
Chief Executive Officer
Agency for Transformation
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