Uganda’s National Budget Conference for the Financial Year 2026/27 opened at a defining moment. With the country preparing for general elections in January 2026 and simultaneously pursuing the President’s Tenfold Growth Strategy under the Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV), the budget process is under unusual pressure. The Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury used the occasion to send a clear message: budget credibility must be restored, and the culture of “budget games” will no longer be tolerated.
These so-called budget games, ranging from padding requests far beyond real needs, to dramatic “crisis card” warnings, to selling attractive but hollow proposals, have become recurring distortions in public finance. Ministries, Departments, and Agencies often exploit political dynamics, pilot ploys, and silent windfalls to secure allocations that later balloon into supplementary requests. The result is weakened fiscal discipline, inefficient service delivery, and an erosion of trust between citizens and government.
Uganda is not alone. Across Africa, governments are grappling with similar challenges. Kenya’s National Treasury, for example, reduced supplementary budgets by more than 30% between 2018 and 2022 by tightening its Integrated Financial Management Information System and linking allocations to performance outcomes. Global studies by the International Budget Partnership show that more than two-thirds of governments are strengthening participation and accountability measures in their budget systems. Uganda’s own program-based budgeting reforms point in the right direction, but changing institutional culture remains the harder battle.
The stakes are high. As one public finance analyst observed, budget manipulation is not simply a technical inconvenience, it undermines confidence in governance itself. Each instance of inflated, disguised, or delayed requests represents resources diverted away from roads, schools, hospitals, and enterprises that could propel real economic transformation. In a pre-election context, this challenge is even sharper, since political priorities can amplify opportunistic financial behavior.
The fight against budget games, however, offers broader lessons beyond government. Similar tactics are seen in the corporate world, construction firms that deliberately underquote only to escalate costs later, health providers who dramatize crises to unlock extra resources, or education projects launched as “pilots” that quietly evolve into permanent commitments. Whether in the public or private sphere, the lesson is the same: credibility in financial planning requires transparency, rigorous scrutiny, and a culture that rewards efficiency over theatrics.
What Uganda now needs is a deliberate cultural and institutional shift. Strengthened analysis, digital monitoring platforms, and independent vetting councils could help ensure that every shilling is aligned to national priorities rather than political manoeuvring. More importantly, budget allocations must be anchored on evidence, cost-benefit analysis, return on investment, and service delivery outcomes, rather than emotional persuasion.
If Uganda succeeds in stamping out budget games, the benefits will be profound: fewer supplementary requests, a stronger reputation for fiscal discipline, more investor confidence, and, most importantly, better delivery of services to citizens. As the Permanent Secretary made clear, this is not merely a technical adjustment. It is a governance commitment that could define the credibility of Uganda’s public finance system in the years ahead.
