By Melanie Aanyu,

Parliament’s Committee on East African Community Affairs has tasked the finance ministry to prioritise funding for the Ministry of East African Community Affairs.

Committee members say low budget allocation to the ministry has affected its capacity to discharge its key activities on national and regional level.

The committee chairperson, Noeline Basemera, said the budgeting of the Ministry of East African Community Affairs has been on a downward trend for the last two consecutive financial years, yet the EAC is expanding its frontiers.

She observed that the ministry’s budget in Financial Year 2019/2020 was at Shs52.2 billion, it reduced to Shs39 billion in Financial Year 2020/2021 and reduced further in Financial Year 2021/2022 to Shs 31.5 billion.

James Baba (NRM, Koboko County) noted that the Ministry of East African Community Affairs had limited funds to promote Uganda’s EAC integration activities, being limited to only catering for EAC contributions and staff salaries.

The state minister for Finance for General Duties, Henry Musasizi, said the best way forward will be to continue engagements to work out mechanisms to close the gaps of concern, which will then increase visibility of the EAC ministry.