Jinja reduces budget proposal for financial year 2024-2025
The Jinja City Council has slashed its budget for the 2024–2025 financial year, citing a number of issues, including insufficient local revenue from property taxes.
Finance Secretary Twaha Waniala of the Jinja City Council announced that the budget for the current FY 2023/2024 has been cut from Shs 59.8 billion to Shs 54.9 billion for the upcoming FY beginning in June.
He stated that due to technological difficulties, such as property and hotel owners neglecting to take visitor records, the council was unable to collect revenue as projected for the end of the year.
He said the finance department could not keep track of these.
On March 22, 2024, during the laying of the budget proposal for the 2024–2025 FY, Waniala made a comment about how many hotels in Jinja City do not keep track of their guests.
“I pray the government comes out with enabling laws to force their owners to register visitors like it is done in other countries,” he added.
He mentioned the purported inadequacy of Jinja City’s revenue database records and insufficient resources for revenue mobilization as additional challenges, adding that there is only one vehicle.
The following departments have seen budget cuts: internal audit went from Shs 360.4 m to Shs 330.3 m; roads and engineering went from Shs 17b to Shs 6.5b; natural resources went from Shs 837.7 m to Shs 674.7 m; community-based services went from Shs 557.3 m to Shs 545.6 m; and health went from Shs 8.6 b to Shs 8.4 b.
