The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, An­i­mal In­dus­try and­ Fish­eries in Fi­nan­cial Year 20l7/​18  was al­lo­cated Shs. 866.757 bil­lion out of which Shs. 74.471bi11ion was for wage re­cur­rent, Shs. I49.425 bil­lion was for non-wage re­cur­rent while Shs.624.535  bil­lion was for cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment, Shs. 1.556 bil­lion was for ar­rears and Shs.36,687 bil­lion was Non-Tax Rev­enue (NTR).

The Agri­cul­ture Com­mit­tee in this re­port ob­served among oth­ers that there were in­ad­e­quate ex­ten­sion ser­vices across the coun­try mainly at­trib­uted to the low ex­ten­sion to farmer ra­tio of 1:1800 1:500.

This has un­der­mined the role of ex­ten­sion in Agri­cul­ture lead­ing to poor/ low yields and hence mak­ing Agri­cul­ture less pro­duc­tive. Be­sides the re­cruited ex­ten­sion work­ers have not been well fa­cil­i­tated to en­able them to per­form their roles ef­fec­tively.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mended that Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cates more funds to sup­port re­cruit­ment and fa­cil­i­ta­tion of ex­ten­sion work­ers in FY 2Ol8/​19 for ef­fec­tive ex­ten­sion ser­vice de­liv­ery.

The fol­low­ing es­ti­mates for the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, An­i­mal In­dus­try and Fish­eries for the Fi­nan­cial Year 2018/ l9 await Par­lia­men­t’s ap­proval;

VOTE 010: MIN­ISTRY OF AGRI­CUL­TURE, AN­I­MAL AND­FISH­ERIES	348,729,000,000
Vote 121: Di­ary De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity(DDA)	6,735,000,000
Vote 125: Na­tional Agri­cul­tural Re­search Cen­tre and Data­bank(NA­GRC&DB)	18,061,000,000
Vote l42:Na­tional Agri­cul­tural Re­search Or­gan­i­sa­tion (NARO)	69,499,909, 000
Vote L52 NAADS Sec­re­tariat	249, 977,049,000
Vote 155: Uganda Cot­ton De­vel­op­ment Or­sani­sa­tion(UCDO)	9,812,888,000
Vote 16O: Uganda Cof­fee De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity	81, 269,000,000
Vote 501-85O: LG Agric and Comm Svcs	122, 967,000,000
Vote 122: KCCA Agric Grant	7,35,000, 000

CRIT­I­CAL UN­FUNDED PRI­OR­I­TIES AND SPEND­ING PRES­SURES, FY

2018/​19

1. Pest, vec­tor and dis­ease con­trol.

It should be noted that an­nual loss in pri­or­ity crops due to pest and dis­eases is es­ti­mated at USD 35-200 mil­lion (ba­nanas), USD 60-80 (FOR CAS­SAVA), USD 10 mil­lion for cot­ton and USDS mil­lion for cof­fee ac­cord­ing to the agri­cul­tural risk as­sess­ment study by PARM/​IFAD.

Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, An­i­mal In­dus­try and Fish­eries (MAAIF) will in­vest in con­trolled re­search es­pe­cially to de­velop bi­o­log­i­cal cop­ing mech­a­nisms for the Fall Army Worm and other pests and dis­eases.

The Min­istry will en­sure that ap­pro­pri­ate pes­ti­cides are avail­able in the mar­ket at af­ford­able prices, through, among oth­ers, part­ner­ship ­with the pri­vate sec­tor. The min­istry will re­quire UGX 12.5 bil­lion to sus­tain the fight against the Fall Army Worm. Cur­rently, the Min­istry only has UGX 2.5 bil­lion cre­at­ing a spend­ing pres­sure of UGX 1O bil­lion.

For live­stock dis­ease con­trol, MAAIF will con­tinue test­ing the var­i­ous tick re­sis­tance cleans­ing aca­ri­cides in the dif­fer­ent ap­pli­ca­tion zones and through NARO sup­port the on­go­ing re­search in de­vel­op­ing aca­ri­cides that are suit­able for Ugan­da’s con­di­tions.

MAAIF will re­quire UGX 1O bil­lion to sus­tain these ac­tiv­i­ties in FY 2018119. The Min­istry only has an al­lo­ca­tion of UGX 4 bil­lion cre­at­ing a fund­ing gap of UGX 6 bil­lion.

To fight against the spread of live­stock dis­eases (es­pe­cially FMD), part­ner­ships will con­tinue to be es­tab­lished with the pri­vate sec­tor who can pro­duce f im­port and mar­ket an­i­mal drugs at af­ford­able prices to our farm­ers. The Min­istry will re­quire at least UGX 12 bil­lion for as­sorted an­i­mal vac­cines to con­trol the spread of live­stock dis­eases. The Min­istry has an al­lo­ca­tion of UGX 5 bil­lion cre­at­ing a fund­ing gap of UGX 7 bil­lion.

For ef­fec­tive con­trol against pests, vec­tors and dis­ease con­trol, MAAIF, there­fore, needs UGX 34.5 bil­lion but only UGX 1 1.5 bil­lion is avail­able in the MTEF leav­ing a fund­ing gap of UGX 23 bil­lion.

Small-scale Ir­ri­ga­tion for cof­fee and hor­ti­cul­ture

MAAIF plans to in­crease the ca­pac­ity of house­holds to have enough wa­ter at farm level MAAIF plans to through con­tin­ued sub­si­diz­ing of dig­ging of val­ley dams in wa­ter stricken ar­eas. Be­gin­ning FY 2ol8l19 to 2O2O121, the Min­istry wants to give more fo­cus on in­creas­ing wa­ter for ir­ri­ga­tion for cof­fee and hor­ti­cul­ture. The small-scale ir­ri­ga­tion sup­port to small­holder cof­fee and hor­ti­cul­ture farm­ers will cost UGX 28 bil­lion. This is a spend­ing pres­sure as we have no bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for it in the FY 20181 19 MTEF.

• Agri­cul­ture re­search and de­vel­op­ment. The Min­istry, through

Na­tional Agri­cul­ture Re­search Or­ga­ni­za­tion (NARO) con­tin­ues to re­spond to the var­i­ous needs iden­ti­fied along the var­i­ous crop and an­i­mal value chains. This is be­ing done along­side var­i­ous chal­lenges, with the main ones be­ing un­der­fund­ing ­for agri­cul­ture re­search and de­vel­op­ment; and weak pro­mo­tion of re­search find­ings. In FY 2018119, NARO plans to among oth­ers re­lo­cate the Live­stock Re­search In­sti­tute from Sukulu hills to Maruzi; and in­vest in the de­vel­op­ment of anti-tick vac­cines for the con­trol of Brown Ear, Blue and Bont legged ticks in Uganda, which cost the coun­try over UGX 18.6 bil­lion a year. The vac­cine pro­duc­tion unit will en­able Uganda to com­mer­cially pro­duce vac­cines for ticks, Foot and Mouth Dis­ease and other vec­tors/ dis­eases which might come on board.

The tar­get is to start pro­duc­tion of enough vac­cines for the lo­cal, re­gional and in­ter­na­tional mar­ket.

Agri­cul­ture mech­a­niza­tion

MAAIF plans to es­tab­lish re­gional mech­a­niza­tion cen­ters which will work in close part­ner­ship with the MAAIF Mech­a­niza­tion de­part­ment and will be re­spon­si­ble for the con­struc­tion of wa­ter for agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion in­fra­struc­ture in the dif­fer­ent re­gions. In the FY 2018/​19­MAAIF will re­quire UGX 76.44 bil­lion to set up the two re­gional cen­ters in West­ern and North­ern Uganda re­gions. The Min­istry only has UGX 3.15 bil­lion in its MTEF cre­at­ing a spend­ing pres­sure of UGX 13.514 bil­lion.

 

OB­SER­VA­TIONS AND REC­OM­MEN­DA­TIONS

Agri­cul­ture Sec­tor Bud­get Al­lo­ca­tion

The Com­mit­tee com­mends Gov­ern­ment for the in­creased al­lo­ca­tion to the Agri­cul­ture sec­tor in terms of vol­ume from FY20l6/​17 (UGX 735.839bn, FY2017/​18(UGX 865.2O2bn) and the FY2018/​19 (UGX 862.92bn1 pro­jec­tion. How­ever, the al­lo­ca­tions are still be­low the

Gov­ern­men­t’s reaf­firmed Mal­abo (AU) com­mit­ment to al­lo­cate 10% of the na­tional bud­get to agri­cul­ture. The al­lo­ca­tion is also lower than the NDP2 cost­ing of Shs. 1.080tril­lion. The Com­mit­tee noted that de­spite the al­lo­ca­tions still falling be­low our CAADP com­mit­ments, the re­leases are even lower.

Rec­om­men­da­tion

 The com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that Min­istry of Fi­nance, Plan­ning and Eco­nomic De­vel­op­ment should ad­dress the con­straints that af­fect re­leases falling be­low the amounts ap­pro­pri­ated and look for strate­gies of in­creas­ing fund­ing to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, a sec­tor where the coun­try has an enor­mous­ com­par­a­tive ad­van­tage. The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that the agri­cul­ture bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion should not fall be­low the cost­ing of NDP2 in the sub­se­quent Fi­nan­cial Years.

Dis­tri­b­u­tion of Trac­tors

The Com­mit­tee noted that the first batch of trac­tors (40) that were pro­cured went to one sub-re­gion i.e. Ankole in the dis­tricts of Mi­tooma,Sheema, Sem­bab­ule, Lyan­tonde, Mbarara, Ntung­amo, and­Kiruhura. The Com­mit­tee notes that this is un­fair to other parts of the coun­try whose land is suit­able for mech­a­nized too. The com­mit­tee was fur­ther in­formed that the Agri­cul­ture Mech­a­niza­tion Pol­icy, Strat­egy, and­ Trac­tor Hire guide­lines have been de­vel­oped by MAAIF.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mended that the sec­ond batch of trac­tors be eq­ui­tably dis­trib­uted among the re­main­ing re­gions i.e. North­ern, East­ern and Cen­tral Re­gion in an eq­ui­table man­ner.

Kam­pala Cap­i­tal City Au­thor­ity (KCCA) Bud­get

 The Com­mit­tee notes that KCCA has been al­lo­cated U6.65bns for FY 2Ol8l19.How­ever, dur­ing the Com­mit­tee in­ter­ac­tion with KCCA of­fi­cials, it noted that the funds be­ing al­lo­cated to KCCA for Agri­cul­ture­ have been di­verted for in­stance in FY 2Ol7 lL8 Ul2bns was used to pur­chase US­AFI mar­ket and those funds have no im­pact on Agri­cul­ture and there­fore are not value for money. The Com­mit­tee also noted that KCCA is du­pli­cat­ing man­dates of other Agri­cul­tural In­sti­tu­tions and hence al­lo­ca­tions are be­ing put to waste.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mended that the Ushs.5.00 bns­ for KCCA for Agri­cul­ture be re-al­lo­cated to crit­i­cal needs of the Agri­cul­tural Sec­tor.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that the U1.65bns for KCCA be re­tained to im­prove Ur­ban farm­ing but with bet­ter modal­i­ties of man­ag­ing it.

NA­GRIC & DB

The Com­mit­tee noted that NA­GRC & DB land has been en­croached upon by dif­fer­ent squat­ters across the coun­try. In ad­di­tion, the Com­mit­tee notes that NA­GRIC has no ca­pac­ity to op­ti­mally: uti­lize the land that they own.

The state of the ranches like Aswa, Maruzi, and Nshaara, is ap­palling. The Com­mit­tee notes that there should be Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships en­gaged in or­der to en­sure proper man­age­ment of this Land.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, An­i­mal In­dus­try and­ Fish­eries adopts a Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship ap­proach in the man­age­ment uti­liza­tion of the ranches.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, An­i­mal In­dus­try and ­Fish­eries sorts out the is­sue of land own­er­ship with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ments to en­able NA­GRC & DB ­carry out its man­date ef­fec­tively and ef­fi­ciently.

Na­tional Agri­cul­tural Re­search Or­ga­ni­za­tion (NARO)

The Com­mit­tee ob­served that NARO has re­mained un­der­funded and is op­er­at­ing us­ing donor funds even for pay­ing salaries. This may lead to these part­ners ei­ther in­flu­enc­ing re­search car­ried out by the Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

The Com­mit­tee ob­served that a lot of NARO land is be­ing grabbed across the coun­try. This has af­fected the ac­tiv­i­ties of NARO.

The Com­mit­tee also notes that there are a lot of tech­nolo­gies de­vel­oped by NARO that are not be­ing uti­lized by farm­ers.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that Min­istry of Fi­nance, Plan­ning an­d E­co­nomic De­vel­op­ment funds the re­search com­po­nent in NARO and pro­vided funds re­quired to equip and fa­cil­i­tate the gene bank.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that Gov­ern­ment takes in­ter­est on ­the land grab­bers and they be pe­nal­ized. The Com­mit­tee also rec­om­mends that NARO sur­veys all its land.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that Gov­ern­ment should fast-track ­the for­ma­tion and op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of NARO Hold­ings Com­pany Lim­ited to en­sure that the Tech­nol­ogy de­vel­oped reaches the farm­ers.

Agri­cul­tural Ex­ten­sion Work­ers

 The Com­mit­tee noted that there areinad­e­quate Agri­cul­tural Ex­ten­sion ser­vices across the coun­try mainly at­trib­uted to the low ex­ten­sion to farmer ra­tio of 1:1800 yet the rec­om­mended ra­tio is 1:500. This has un­der­mined the role of ex­ten­sion in Agri­cul­ture lead­ing to poor/ low yields and hence mak­ing Agri­cul­ture less pro­duc­tive. Be­sides the re­cruited ex­ten­sion has­not been­well fa­cil­i­tated to en­able them to per­form their roles ef­fec­tively

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cates more funds amount­ing to UGX 25.75 bil­lion to sup­port re­cruit­ment and fa­cil­i­ta­tion of ex­ten­sion work­ers in FY 2018/​l9 for ef­fec­tive ex­ten­sion ser­vice de­liv­ery.

Pend­ing Leg­is­la­tions

The Com­mit­tee notes that there are still a lot of leg­is­la­tion in MAAIF that re­main un­de­vel­oped or in draft form, for ex­am­ple, Or­ganic Agri­cul­ture Pol­icy, seed pol­icy, cof­fee Bill, NAADS amend­ment Act, Meat Pro­duc­tion Bill, Reg­u­la­tions for Plant Va­ri­ety Pro­tec­tion Act, 2Ol4

Reg­u­la­tions for Plant Pro­tec­tion and Health Act, 2015 Phy­tosan­i­tary Pol­icy, Na­tional Fish­eries Bill and Live­stock pol­icy.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that MAAIF fast tracks all the pend­ing leg­is­la­tion­s in or­der to en­hance the per­for­mance of the Agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

Agri­cul­tural Sta­tis­tics

 The Com­mit­tee notes that whereas Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to plan and al­lo­cate funds for Agri­cul­ture, the ac­tual num­bers of farm­ers, types of the crop by out­put, ac­tual sur­pluses of crop etc are not known which leaves gaps in ef­fec­tive planning. The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that MAAIF ex­pe­dites the process of ac­quir­ing good and re­li­able Agri­cul­tural sta­tis­tics for the coun­try in or­der to en­sure ef­fec­tive plan­ning for the Agri­cul­tural sec­tor.

Dis­trict Farm In­sti­tutes

The Com­mit­tee was in­formed that some of the Dis­trict Farm In­sti­tutes have been con­verted into Zond Agri­cul­tural Institutes. The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that these re­gional Zonal Agri­cul­tural In­sti­tutes be made fully func­tional in or­der to play their role of farmer train­ing and knowl­edge trans­fer.

Wa­ter for Agri­cul­ture

The Com­mit­tee was in­formed that the Na­tional Ir­ri­ga­tion Pol­icy was adopted by Cab­i­net while the Na­tional Ir­ri­ga­tion r Plan is still developed. The com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that MAAIF in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Min­istry of wa­ter and En­vi­ron­ment ex­pe­dites the fi­nal­iza­tion of the Na­tional Ir­ri­ga­tion­ Mas­ter Plan.

Re­vival of Co­op­er­a­tive so­ci­eties

The Com­mit­tee ob­served that in the 1960s and 1970s, the co­op­er­a­tives were the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing voices of the peas­ants. Co­op­er­a­tives are im­por­tant be­cause they en­sure pro­vi­sions of farm in­puts, bar­gained fa­vor­able prices and as­sured mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties and chan­nels for farm­ers, pro­duce with price-sta­bi­liza­tion fac­tors catered for to avoid desta­bi­liz­ing fluc­tu­a­tions. Con­se­quently, agri­cul­tural con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­omy has con­tin­ued to de­cline due to chronic ex­ploita­tion by mid­dle­men and re­duc­tion in prof­itabil­ity.

The Com­mit­tee re­it­er­ates its rec­om­men­da­tion that the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, An­i­mal In­dus­try and­ Fish­eries should work with the Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and co­op­er­a­tives sec­tor play­ers like Uganda co­op­er­a­tive Al­liance to en­sure that ac­tiv­i­ties for co­op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment are har­mo­nized to en­able farm­ers to have­ bet­ter bar­gain­ing power for credit, mar­kets, prices of in­puts and agri­cul­tural prod­ucts among oth­ers.

Gov­er­nance and co­or­di­na­tion in the sec­tor

The Com­mit­tee ob­served that the agri­cul­ture sec­tor con­tin­ues to suf­fer from more than two decades of poor gov­er­nance and lack of co­or­di­na­tion. The spend­ing pri­or­i­ties of the sec­tor are spread across nu­mer­ous votes with no clear co­or­di­na­tion mech­a­nism. For ex­am­ple, NAADS, Cot­ton De­vel­op­ment or­ga­ni­za­tion, an­d Uganda cof­fee De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity are all in one way or the other in­volved in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­puts. The Min­istry is also silent about the op­er­a­tions of Op­er­a­tion Wealth Cre­ation, how it is linked to the dif­fer­ent Votes and what it has achieved to date. The lack of co­or­di­na­tion and the re­sul­tant po­ten­tial du­pli­ca­tion po­ten­tially ex­plains the cur­rent fail­ures within the sec­tor’

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that gov­er­nance of the agri­cul­tural sec­tor be re­formed fo­cus­ing on strength­en­ing the role of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ments in im­ple­ment­ing agri­cul­tural de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes while strength­en­ing the pol­icy, co­or­di­na­tion, over­sight, stan­dards-set­tin­gand reg­u­la­tion role of cen­tral gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

Agri­cul­ture sec­tor fi­nanc­ing

The com­mit­tee noted that mo­bi­liza­tion of af­ford­able fi­nanc­ing for agri­cul­ture has re­mained a con­sis­tent prob­lem stated in every rel­e­vant pol­icy state­ment of gov­ern­ment. Nu­mer­ous schemes (both pub­lic and pri­vate) have been ini­ti­ated and im­ple­mented over the last 5 years par­tic­u­larly in the FY20 16l/​17. However, these schemes have not had a pos­i­tive im­pact on the Agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

The com­mit­tee fur­ther noted that the agri­cul­ture sec­tor like any other busi­ness re­quires in­sur­ance against risks.

The com­mit­tee re­it­er­ates its rec­om­men­da­tion that Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lishes an Agri­cul­tural Bank so that the Agri­cul­tural credit fa­cil­ity cur­rently held in Bank of Uganda and other Com­mer­cial Banks is ex­tended to farm­ers in or­der to solve one of the crit­i­cal bot­tle­necks to en­hanc­ing agri­cul­tural trans­for­ma­tion in the coun­try by de­vel­op­ing and de­ploy­ing ap­pro­pri­ate agri­cul­tural fi­nance de­liv­ery in­stru­ments.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that Agri­cul­tural in­sur­ance should also be pro­vided to pro­tect farm­ers against ef­fects of agri­cul­tural risks.

The com­mit­tee fur­ther amend­ment of reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the agri­cul­ture credit fa­cil­ity scheme from the cur­rent one which tends to ben­e­fit large-scale a­gri­cul­tural proces­sors as op­posed to small­holder agri­cul­tur­al­ists

Post harvest han­dling

The Com­mit­tee ob­served that farm­ers in Uganda are prone to posthar­vest losses due to in­ad­e­quate han­dling and stor­age prac­tices at house­hold, level. Farm­ers lose more than 30% of their crops every year to in­sects, pests, mold and moisture. Farm­ers rely on sun-dry­ing to en­sure that crops are well-dried be­fore stor­age as a preser­va­tion method. There are no re­frig­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ties and si­los to en­sure safe stor­age. If un­fa­vor­able weather con­di­tions oc­cur, par­tic­u­larly lack of ad­e­quate sun­light then losses are height­ened. These losses ad­versely af­fect house­hold in­comes and food se­cu­rity.

 

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, An­i­mal In­dus­try and Fisheries works to­gether with Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and Co­op­er­a­tives to en­sure that si­los are built both at house­hold and parish lev­els so as to en­able farm­ers store their pro­duce prop­erly and re­duce on losses.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, An­i­mal In­dus­try and Fisheries sen­si­tizes and trains farm­ers so as to equip them with good post-har­vest han­dling skills to en­able them maximize profits from their pro­duce.

NAADS/ Op­er­a­tion Wealth Cre­ation Pro­gramme

The Com­mit­tee ob­served that Gov­ern­ment ac­quired a loan to fi­nance the e-voucher card sys­tem or co-fund­ing for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­puts to farm­ers whereby al­lo­ca­tion to farm­ers will be made through an on­line sys­tem. Farm­ers will use to­kens to pick in­puts from lo­gis­ti­cal hubs or ap­proved sup­pli­ers within their re­gions and will be re­quired to con­tribute a per­cent­age of the price of the in­puts. This will re­duce wastage of re­sources.

The Com­mit­tee ob­served that a lot of money con­tin­ues to be wasted in pur­chas­ing in­puts dis­trib­uted un­der a top- dow­n ap­proach with so many Dis­trict Lo­cal Gov­ern­ments hav­ing no say in the in­puts to be dis­trib­uted in their re­spec­tive dis­tricts. There has also been movement of in­puts across re­gions which has com­pro­mised their qual­ity and ac­clima­ti­za­tion and in­deed high mor­tal­ity rates have been reg­is­tered in live­stock dis­trib­uted un­der OWC.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that the sys­tem of pro­vid­ing free in­puts should be phased out grad­u­ally and be re­placed by the e-voucher card sys­tem and orig­i­nal NAADS co-fund­ing sys­tem to en­sure sus­tain­abil­ity and in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion of ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that the NAADS Act, 2OO1 should be amended to stream­line op­er­a­tions of Op­er­a­tion Wealth Cre­ation.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that NAADS part­ners with re­gional sup­pli­ers of the re­spec­tive in­puts to im­prove the qual­ity and en­sure ac­clima­ti­za­tion of the in­puts dis­trib­uted.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that NAADS should de­sist from sup­ply­ing in­puts us­ing a top-down ap­proach as op­posed to a bot­tom-up­ap­proach i.e. Lo­cal Gov­ern­ments should take a lead in de­cid­ing which in­puts should be pro­cured for their re­spec­tive Dis­tricts.

1. Cof­fee De­vel­op­ment

The Com­mit­tee noted that Cof­fee is one of the ma­jor cash crops and ex­ports of the coun­try and con­tributes a lot to the coun­try’s GDP. For example coffee ex­ports in­creased from 3.6 mil­lion (60 kg) bags in FY 2015/​16 val­ued at USD 3S2mil­lion to 4.2 mil­lion (60 kg) bags in FY 2016/​17 val­ued at USD 478mil1ion. Be­sides, the Min­istry has a tar­get of ex­port­ing 20 mil­lion bags of cof­fee per year by 2025.

How­ever, the cof­fee sub-sec­tor still re­mains un­der­funded which will not en­able Uganda Cof­fee De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity to achieve its tar­get.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther ob­served that H.E The Pres­i­dent gave a di­rec­tive to give cof­fee seedlings to farm­ers above the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion. Many nurs­ery op­er­a­tors who sup­plied the seedlings have not been paid and the money has ac­cu­mu­lated to shs.57, 084,188,200.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that Min­istry of Fi­nance, Plan­ning and Economic De­vel­op­ment pro­vides the shs.57, 084,188,200 to the cof­fee sub-sec­tor to en­able it to pay the out­stand­ing ar­rears to nurs­ery op­er­a­tors and achieve its tar­get of ex­port­ing 20 mil­lion bags of cof­fee per year by 2o25 and con­tribute to the coun­try’s econ­omy.

The Fish­eries sub-sec­tor

The Com­mit­tee was con­cerned that de­spite the po­ten­tial al­ready ex­hib­ited by the Fish­eries sub-sec­tor, the sec­tor has re­mained in­ad­e­quately fi­nanced. The MPS FY 2Ol8l19 pro­poses a to­tal al­lo­ca­tion of 1l.S3­bil­lion. How­ever, only 5 bil­lion has been al­lo­cated. Other than the de­ploy­ment of the Uganda Peo­ple’s De­fense Forces (UPDF) to curb il­le­gal fish­ing, not much has been done by Gov­ern­ment to sup­port those in­volved in fish­ing.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther ob­served that Gov­ern­ment ac­quired a loan from African De­vel­op­ment Bank in 2006 to con­struct nine fish land­ing sites in Kalana­gala, Mayuge, Bu­sia, Na­mayingo, Buikwe, Buyende, Bullisa and Naka­songola. How­ever, only five of them were fully com­pleted leav­ing four namely Rwampanga in Nka­songola, Kiyindi in Buikwe, Butyaba in

Bullisa and Bukungu in Buyende in­com­plete.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that Gov­ern­ment pro­vides re­sources for com­ple­tion of the four land­ing sites and full op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of the five which were completed.

The Com­mit­tee fur­ther rec­om­mends that that Gov­ern­ment stops the importation of il­le­gal fish­ing gear and stream­lines op­er­a­tions be­tween UPDF and MAAIF to en­able the fish­eries sub-sec­tor to perform effectively and ef­fi­ciently.

The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that fish­ing in­puts should be in­cluded un­der the NAADS Pro­gramme to en­able those in­volved in fish­ing to ac­cess ap­pro­pri­ate fish­ing gear.

Con­clu­sion

Though Agri­cul­ture re­mains a key eco­nomic growth, it still has many crit­i­cal yet un­der­funded ar­eas as stated above which need to be ad­dressed if the sec­tor is to achieve its goals in FY 2018/​19