On March 29th, the Speaker of Parliament, Anita Anet Among, said she used the report on the implementation of the parish development model in the Lango sub-region to draw the attention of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. She further ordered other sub regions to emulate from the report of Lango sub region.
While presenting the PDM implementation assessment report in parliament on behalf of MPs from Lango sub-region, Kole North County MP Samuel Opio Acuti, noted discrepancies in the funds disbursed to various Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations (SACCOs) and delayed disbursement of funds in the financial year 2021-2022.
According to the report signed by a total of 17 MPs from Lango, the sub-region registered 597 parish SACCOs, of which 277 received less than the expected amount noting that a total of 582 SACCOs in the Lango sub-region have so far received Shs25 million, while 15 did not receive any money. But only 29 percent of the parish SACCOS (175) in the Lango sub-region received the full Shs17 million in 2021/2022, while 25 percent of the SACCOS (145) did not receive any money.
The report attributed this to errors in their account names and numbers, while some were not recognised by the Finance Ministry as parishes.
“The delay in allowing SACCOs to disburse the funds, coupled with the changing dates for rollout, has resulted in a loss of confidence in the programme,” he said.
The report urged the ministry to pay arrears and outstanding payments from the two financial years to the respective SACCOs before the end of June 2023.
By the end of the financial year 2022/2023, the Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development is expected to disburse Shs100 million to each registered SACCO, with Shs25 million expected to be released in every quarter of the financial year.
The PDM programme targets 39 percent of households that are still engaged in subsistence farming with the objective of enabling them to increase agricultural productivity and value addition through access to a revolving fund at affordable rates.
President Yoweri Museveni, while addressing Parliament on March 16, 2023, warned government officials to desist from the temptation of mismanaging the Sh1.5 trillion Parish Revolving Fund (PRF) under the Parish Development Model (PDM), which is meant as seed capital for a section of Ugandans trapped in the subsistence economy.
In the 2022–2023 financial year, the government allocated Sh100 million for each of the 10,594 parishes across the country to support the aforementioned Ugandans in engaging in commercially viable agribusiness value chain enterprises.
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