Sack Your Advisers, Save Money, IMF Tells Museveni By WAIRAGALA WAKABI THE EASTAFRICAN THE WORLD Bank and the International Monetary Fund have advised President Yoweri Museveni to sack as many as possible of his advisers and Deputy Resident District Commissioners (RDCs).
They also want the president to reduce salaries for those he retains as a means of cutting down on the public administration budget. The donors say the advisers and RDCs eat up resources that should instead be channelled into poverty alleviation and private sector development. Currently, expenditure on public administration is second only to that on education, with an allocation of 17.7 per cent of the government budget. Calculations by the donors indicate that if the president were to effect even minimal changes, up to Ush30 billion ($17.6 million) would be freed up in the next two to three years. Each of Uganda's 56 districts has an RDC and a deputy RDC. Some of them have assistant RDCs. The World Bank has suggested only districts with a population of over 500,000 inhabitants should have deputy RDCs, a proposal State House opposes. At the moment, the public administration docket is allocated Ush365 billion ($183 million) annually, but donors want this cut by 10 per cent in the next three years. "Public administration is a big problem for the budget. The RDCs, assistant RDCs and advisers are all very expensive," Sudharshan Canagarajah, the World Bank's senior country economist in Kampala, told The EastAfrican last week. "The number of people employed should be reduced and incentives for advisers cut." An official of the IMF said separately that reducing spending on public administration was among the priority areas they wanted Uganda to work out. While giving Uganda $2.8 million on June 28, Shigemitsu Sugisaki, IMF deputy managing director and acting board chairman, also said Uganda needed to streamline expenditure on public administration. "Given the limited availability of budgetary resources and in light of higher defence spending to face the security situation in northern Uganda, it will be critical to meet the budget's revenue target and curb non-priority spending while increasing poverty-related expenditures," said Mr Sugisaki. Last December, Uganda and the IMF were supposed to meet to review the country's progress in reducing the public administration spending. The meeting was, however, put off after the Finance Ministry reported that no progress had been made. Sources told The EastAfrican that, during consultations between the IMF executive board and Ugandan officials that ended on February 12, the Fund asked Uganda to expedite the streamlining of expenditure on public administration with a view to improving efficiency and freeing resources for poverty-related programmes and development spending. Three months into the 2002/03 financial year, Uganda effected an increase in the defence and public administration expenditures, giving the latter an additional Ush15 billion ($7.5 million) that donors and parliament had not endorsed. \\\\\\\"Always be a first rate version of yourself instead of a second rate version of someone else.\\\\\\\\\\\\\" Njoki Paul University of Pretoria
