Parliament’s Budget to Hit UGX 1.5 Trillion by 2029/30 — Yet Little Has Changed Since Kadaga’s Era

Kampala — Uganda’s Parliament is set for a major financial expansion, with its budget projected to rise to UGX 1.527 trillion in the Financial Year 2029/30, up from UGX 917.642 billion in the FY 2025/26, according to the institution’s newly released Strategic Plan (2025/26–2029/30).

The plan outlines an increase of more than UGX 600 billion within five years , a sharp surge attributed mainly to covering emoluments and associated benefits for Members of Parliament, including medical insurance, committee oversight field activities, public outreach programs and participation in the annual East African Community Inter-Parliamentary Sports Tournament.

According to the document, the funding growth is necessary to enable Parliament to “effectively execute its constitutional mandate,” through strengthening oversight, legislation, and representation functions.

However, this steep increase has drawn comparisons to the Rebecca Kadaga era when Parliament operated with almost the same number of MPs and staff yet under a much smaller budget.

In FY 2018/19, during Kadaga’s tenure as Speaker, Parliament’s total budget stood at about UGX 645 billion with roughly UGX 559 billion spent on recurrent expenses such as salaries, allowances, and committee facilitation and only UGX 86 billion allocated for development.

Despite the current Parliament citing rising operational costs, the structure, staffing levels, and core activities have largely remained unchanged since then.

This means that in just over a decade, Parliament’s budget will have more than doubled, even though its composition and mandate are virtually the same.

Critics argue that this trend exposes deeper inefficiencies within the legislature. “If the number of MPs and staff hasn’t grown significantly, why should taxpayers bear an additional 600 billion shillings in just five years?” a Kampala-based governance analyst told us.

Observers note that much of the current budget growth is being driven by non-structural expenditures such as allowances, welfare packages and field operations rather than new infrastructure, innovation, or service delivery improvements.

The sharp rise also comes at a time when Uganda is grappling with mounting public debt, inflationary pressures, and underfunding in key sectors like health and education.

While Parliament defends the budget expansion as necessary to “enhance transparency and citizen engagement,” critics say the figures tell a different story one of an increasingly expensive institution whose operational outputs have not kept pace with its financial appetite.

If implemented as projected, Parliament’s annual budget by 2029/30 will stand at nearly 1.5 trillion shillings, almost double that of a decade earlier  raising fresh questions about value for money, public accountability and the true cost of representation in Uganda’s democracy.