Adhoc Committee recommends UNRA, URF maintained as independent agencies

By Francis Lubega

11^th May 2022

The Adhoc committee set up by parliament to review the proposed merger of several autonomous Government agencies has asked the cabinet to reconsider the decision on some agencies.

This is part of the recommendation in the Adhoc committee reports presented to the house by the Bukanga County Member of Parliament, Nathan Byanyima.

On February 22, 2021, Cabinet resolved to merge, mainstream and rationalize Government agencies, Commissions, Authorities and Public Enterprises to enable efficient and effective service delivery.

The process started with the abolition of the Rural Electrification Agency, whose function and budget reverted to the Ministry of Energy.

As a result, some of the affected agencies petitioned MPs on grounds that there was no clear justification for the rationalization exercise and that it was likely to have a negative impact on service delivery and the economy.

This prompted the Speaker Anita Among to constitute an Adhoc committee to inquire into the merger process on September 2nd 2021 to examine the rationale behind the merger.

Now in its report, the Adhoc committee agreed with the Government to retain some institutions like the Bank of Uganda, Uganda Revenue Authority, Uganda Development Bank, Financial Intelligence Authority, Housing Finance Bank, Development Finance Company of Uganda, and National Social Security Fund among others as semi-autonomous due to their vital role in the socio-economic transformation of the economy.

However, the committee noted that they had found a number of areas where the rationalization would have negative effects on the economy and undermine the momentum for socio-economic transformation.

The committee recommended that the Government maintain the Uganda National Roads Authority -UNRA and Uganda Roads Fund –URF as semi-autonomous agencies for the management of roads in the Country.

Cabinet had resolved to mainstream UNRA and URF under the Ministry of Works and Transport.

Defending their recommendation, the committee chairperson Byanyima said that UNRA has built capacity in the area of road design and supervision, adding that many projects are currently supervised by UNRA engineers, something that has saved the country huge sums of money that used to go to foreign consultants.