The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga has instructed the Auditor General to commence an audit into the misappropriation by officials from the Ministry of Finance of funds worth Shs 720 billion of a loan acquired from Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (PTA).
According to the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report, the Minister of Finance, Matia Kasaija has been found wanting; recommending that he should be censured immediately for lying to Parliament on acquisition of a loan that was diverted to other expenditures.
The contentious loan was meant to support the National Medical Stores (NMS) to purchase more drugs as well as boosting the operations of the Rural Electricity Agency (REA).
The Minister of Finance was thus accorded a chance to present a defence on the matter at hand before Parliament takes a decision, but he instead failed several times to present his case, telling the Speaker that he wasn’t ready.
This occurred for some sessions but the Speaker could not take any more excuses and chose to open up the debate on the committee report in absence of the delayed presentation by Kasaija.
Several members that took to the floor argued that it would be proper for Parliament to seek for the services of the Auditor General to find out how the funds were withdrawn from the national coffers, how they were spent and who spent it.
Kadaga promised to rule on the matter after revisiting the language that was used by the Ministry while convincing MPs to pass the loan in the 9th Parliament.
“In order to ascertain and find out the utilization of the loan, let’s wait for the Auditor General to carry out a special audit of this loan, which will guide the House in debating the report of the committee as prepared,” Kadaga said.
“I therefore direct the Auditor General to start a special audit in the utilization of and performance of USD 200 million loan from Parliament acquired from PTA Bank and submit the report to my office by 20th February 2018, we will then consider the PAC report and make resolutions.”
However, a minority report signed by Bukooli Central MP, Silwanyi Moses opposes some of the observations made by PAC.
Silwanyi defends Kasaija saying that the purpose of the PTA loan was to facilitate the stabilization of the Uganda shilling against the US Dollar which at the time was an immediate key priority to the benefit of all Ugandans and that “documentation presented to Parliament was supportive of this objective”.
He further says that since the Ministry of Finance provided the requisite documentation to support the major purpose for the loan, there was no false pretense or fraudulent action by the Minister.