Roman author, lawyer,
orator, & politician, Marcus
Tullius Cicero
106 BC - 43 BC argued that “The
National Budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; Payments to
foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt.
People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance” The foregoing brings out two important
lessons: a) that a National budget
should focus on growing internal capability to generate local revenues to
finance its own budget and thus reduce dependence on aid. Indeed, that we
incurred $5.31 billion on importing goods and earned only $4.1billion from
export of goods and services in the last financial year is a trend that we have
to reverse as a country. b) That
citizens should not expect government to provide everything but rather people
should work to develop themselves and their country- a budget should not make
people dependant on the state. A state is only a regulator and enabler. Will
the 2012/2013 agriculture budget enable the sector to grow and gain
competitiveness in the region? I will hereunder provide my thoughts on Hon.
Maria Kiwanuka’s budget speech.
- Allocation to the agriculture sector: A 150billion
increment to sector allocation, i.e. from 434.1 billion last financial
year to 585.3 billion this financial year is a positive move in a right
direction. Considering the importance of the sector to food and nutrition
security, creation of jobs and raw materials, agriculture should get even
bigger share of the pie. But what should concern farmers and those that are
concerned about them is the efficient utilisation of the allocated money
to transform lives of farmers and country. Therefore, farmer groups,
community leaders and barazas, should develop mechanisms to follow this
money. At the National level, Uganda National Farmers Federation should
coordinate budget implementation monitoring efforts. Farmers must organize
to engage and turn budget in their favour.
- Clear targets and outcome indicators should be
contained in the budget speech. For example, National
Agriculture Advisory Services (NAADS) got 52.9 billion; will this for
example increase the percentage of farmer households that are visited by
an extension worker from the current 14% to at least 30% come next
financial year? And what will be the percentage of this on real
agriculture productivity growth?
How about the allocation of 48.9billion to the National
Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO)? will this allocation lead to
development of for example coffee and banana wilt resistant varieties by next
financial year- or a report on progress? Or what is the projected figure
of farmers that will receive wilt free planting materials? The selection
of flagship commodities like coffee, tea, maize, beans, market fruits,
vegetables and fish is good for both export earnings and food and
nutrition security- remember beans and posho have guaranteed food and
nutrition security in most schools for many years. But what is our target
tonnage for beans, maize, fish this financial year? Targets will be the
only way we can follow and determine our performance come the reading of
our next budget.
- The power of leverage and smart budget applications. The budget can also
be a powerful stimulator of innovations and investment from the private
sector. For example, unlike the last financial year where hoes were
prominent – this financial year, 500 million shillings have been provided
for tractors. Indeed with increasing scarcity of labour resources in the
rural, and the cost of opening up arable land for production are
increasing at a geometric rate with the piece rate is averaging at 3500
shillings – this is a good move. These tractors, once used collectively
will provide a great relief. But some interesting options to consider- If
we offered a tax holiday incentive to a tractor assembling company and
removed all taxes and duties on tractor spare parts, we could have a
cartel of interested companies that will provide tractors to farmers and
farmer groups across the country at affordable rates. The same would also
work for irrigation. There are companies, for example Davis and Shirtliff
that produce handy and intermediate irrigation equipment, can a tax
incentive make their equipment affordable to many farmers? It is indeed
viable. How about such companies working with Uganda Industrial Research
Institute to spur innovations in intermediate and high end irrigation
technologies?
- Allocation to Uganda Coffee Development Authority
(UCDA). UCDA
has been doing a good job. They scientifically realized that the reason
for slumping coffee productivity and plummeting exports was due to coffee
wilt, old coffee trees (above 30 years and can’t be productive),
harvesting of green unripe bellies and poor post harvest handling. UCDA
has been on strong campaign- distributing clean planting materials and
doing some progressive work on the other above challenges. UCDA should
have been rewarded with a bigger pie within the agriculture sector budget-
I hope they can mobilize money from other sources to keep the campaign and
momentum going.
Conclusion;
We are reaching a time when
agriculture sector cannot be ignored. Budget numbers alone will not wholly
eliminate supply side and demand side constraints facing the agriculture
sector. But rather integrity in delivery of agriculture services will be the
anchor to unlock the sector code. This is a role we can all undertake in our
communities, churches and other spaces. I agree with the point of view that community
leaders and church leaders at the grass roots should get back to work and re-engage
the work of monitoring service delivery and mobilizing people to work. By laws
that stop people from alcohol consumption at 11 am at those village trading
centres should be enforced. A mix of enforcement and the market should work as
pull factors to transform the rural. Lipton, 2005, argues that there are
virtually no examples of mass poverty reduction since 1700 that did not start
with sharp rises in employment and self employment income due to higher
productivity in small scale family farms. This remains true for Uganda.
Morrison Rwakakamba
Chief
Executive Officer
Agency
for Transformation
Re-imagining agricultural and
environmental policy
No comments:
Post a Comment