Mathias Mpuuga, the opposition Parliamentary Commissioner, has said that the government has failed in implementing its formulated projects like the Parish Development Model (PDM) and Emyooga because they were copied from somewhere and that they are without clear formulas. He said that is why the government is gambling with the projects and has failed to eradicate poverty and take the economy into the middle income range.

According to Mpuuga, the program-based approach to budgeting has caused a lot of confusion amongst President Museveni’s ministers, who have failed to grasp the approach and are just gambling with it.

“While we are officially operating under the government’s program-based approach, its funding proposals are still sector-based, which has caused confusion in parliamentary committees that are processing the National Budget. The problem stems from the failure to amend the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA),” Mpuuga said.

Mpuuga made the remarks on February 23, 2024, during a retreat he attended with his fellow opposition Members of Parliament to formulate an alternative budget for the financial year 2024/2025 at the Imperial Royal Hotel in Kampala.

Mpuuga noted that the program-based approach is being implemented on paper, but in reality, it’s a sector-based budget. He added that it is a nice paper with a multiplicity of roads that lead nowhere in reality.

According to him, the government introduced bills to rationalize government agencies; however, taking a look at the mother of ministries, where all the agencies are being collapsed, the ministries themselves are already collapsing. Mpuuga linked it to taking dead people to the mortuary with the expectation that they would be resurrected.

The PDM is a comprehensive development plan strategy that was conceived under the third National Development Plan (NDPlll) of Uganda with the aim of accelerating decentralization and uplifting household incomes.