By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
A “classified budget” refers to a portion of a government or organization’s budget that is kept confidential, often for security or national interest reasons. It’s a way of designating specific expenditures that are not subject to public scrutiny or oversight.
Not all countries of the world have classified budgets. However, many do use budget classifications to organize and track government spending. While some countries may have a more detailed system, like the United States with its various budget classifications, others may use simpler approaches, according to GSDRC. t’s difficult to definitively name specific countries that have no classified spending. However, some countries are more transparent about their budgets than others, and certain types of spending are often not publicly disclosed in any country.
While the Kenyan national budget isn’t officially classified in the way a government secret might be, there are areas where information is not readily public, and it can be challenging to get a complete, detailed breakdown of spending. This isn’t due to a lack of a functional classification system, but rather a need for more transparency and more specific, detailed information.On the other hand, Tanzania has a classified budget. However, while the general budget framework is public, certain aspects may be kept confidential for security or other reasons.
Apparently, the Uganda Government is transparent about how much money goes to the Classified budget but is not so transparent about how it is spent, which makes it a very secretive budget. It is the President of Uganda who seems to be its manager and who uses it as he pleases.
As Khisa (2025) put it, no other individual in Uganda presides over a bigger cache of cash, literally, than the President. This could be because the President of Uganda has never completely given up the post of Minister of Finance although Kasaija manifests as the Minister of Finance.
All the classified budget of Government goes to the Chief occupant of State House, who happens to be President Tibuhaburwa Museveni. He has accumulated a huge staff force, to serve mainly his political interests and which he pays hugely.
Therefore, Classified Budget is where financial indiscipline is exhibited most in all budget classifications of the Uganda National Budget. Even supplementary budgets routinely allocate money to the Classified Budget.
As early as 2020 Mubangizi (2020) recorded the steep rise in classified budgets in Uganda. In Financial Year 2016/17, total classified expenditure accounted for only UGX 441 billion but has now risen to UGX 2.5 trillion representing an extraordinary increment of 488% over a period of 4 years. However, according to Hon Ssemujju-Nganda, the Parliament of Uganda allocated to the Classified budget a total of 16 trillion Shillings from 2021 to the Present.
Corruption and wanton siphoning of government funds that would have been channeled to providing social services and widening social safety nets that can in turn propel economic growth and development, now characterise money flow in Uganda with the President as the fulcrum.
Indeed, supplementary budgets have become nothing but avenues for siphoning of money and wanton corruption. This is the reason education, health and the transport system are decaying, and provision of electricity to the majority of Ugandans and numerous economic entities has become a nightmare as government, particularly President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, preaches the religion of patriotism. Meanwhile government is strategising to tax even the sellers of vegetables in the rurl areas, to get money that mat more likely end up as supplementary budgets, wth the classified budget managed by the President getting the lion’s share.
When Covid-19 pandemic struck the world, government’s response became an early cash bonanza. The President tightly controlled the flow of cash bonanzas in form of supplementary budgets. The Ugandan government’s Covid-19 budget of March 2020 is presented here to demonstrate the problem.
The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in government expenditure far exceeding budgeted sums. In Uganda, supplementary budgets have become larger and more frequent. The additional funds cannot always be justified, with multiple agencies seeking a share and evidence of doubling up across sectors. The supplementary budgets may also evidence the improper allocation and apparent misuse of public resources. In Uganda, security seems to have been prioritised over health, for example. The Ugandan government’s Covid-19 budget of March 2020 is presented here to demonstrate the problem
Article 156 of the Uganda Constitution 1995 and Section 25 of the Public Finance Management Act allow supplementary budget estimates to be put before Parliament. Here it is determined whether or not a need has arisen for expenditure not previously budgeted for or for expenditure that exceeds the budgeted sums. Supplementary expenditure must be ‘unabsorbable, unavoidable, and unforeseeable.”
In March 2020 alone, the Government of Uganda presented four supplementary budgets before Parliament. Their frequency and size have not gone unnoticed. Members of Parliament (MPs) have noted that the situation undermines the planning and budgeting process. There have also been allegations that sectors seeking supplementary budgets, do so to avoid the extensive scrutiny that the annual budget receives.
On 31 March 2020, the government sought a further 284 billion Ugandan shillings (UGX) to cater for the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was broken down as detailed in Table 1. It is not surprising that security sought almost as much as Health (Table 1). Security falls under Classified Budget, while health, like education and agriculture which are social areas, do not and are not valued as greatly by the President of Uganda, whose development philosophy is that social development should come last after infrastructural development.
Table 1 (Source:CMI U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, 2020).
Uganda’s supplementary budget has been on a steady increase over the years, peaking from 4 per cent of the approved budget in the 2008/09 financial year, to 7.2 per cent in 2009/10 before reaching 27.7 per cent in 2010/11 (Daily Monitor, 2012).
Daily Monitor of 15 October 2012 cites Godber Tumushabe, a policy analyst and Executive Director, Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) saying that supplementary budgets are meant to cater for emergencies, but the tendency has been that they have been exceeding what is allowed by law, indicating that Uganda’s budget discipline has broken down. He is supported by Turyafuna (2025) by law supplementary budgets should be used sparingly for emergencies like natural disasters, urgent national security matters or unexpected economic shocks. However, they have become tools of indiscipline.
Besides, while making the National Budget, MPs may solicit fro bribes to approve different institutional budgets. For example, it was alleged that on May 13, 2024, at Hotel Africana in Kampala, three MPs (Mutembuli, Akamba and Namujju) solicited an undue advantage of 20% of the anticipated budget increment for the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) from Ms. Mariam Wangadya, the commission’s chairperson (The Black Examiner, 2024).
In March 2025 the Parliament of Uganda passed a UGX 4.255 trillion supplementary budget. Earlier in January, 2025 Parliament approved UGX1.050 trillion supplementary budget a huge part of which was classified budget. However, Turyafuna (2025) wondered why the supplementary budgets were not factored in the National budget. He submitted that these budgetary practices undermine parliamentary oversight, transparency and prudent financial planning, and conceal corruption while saddling taxpayers with unsustainable debt.
Turyafuna (2025) also submitted, in what is highly protected article in Parliament Watch, that classified expenditure has become a conduit for unaccountable spending. He noted that State House Classified budget has supersonically risen to astronomical levels and presents a gaping accountability vacuum. He decried the choice of government to expand classified expenditure instead of allocating adequate funding to social development and services.Indeed, the quality of education, health and agriculture is plummeting because inadequate funding as Classified expenditure takes too much money in form of supplementary budgets and classified budget.
It is clear that in the minds of our governors it is their interests that come first, not those of Ugandans. The interests may include political and business interests.
This article,as its title shows, has been written to show the use and misuse of the classified budget of Uganda amounting to gross abuse of which both Parliament and the Executive are jointly are liable.They have both abandoned serving the public interest and the chorus of patriotism is nothing but concealment of the truth of wastage of public funds. The article follows closely President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s action to gift Members of Parliament with 100m shillings cash bonanza (Busein Samilu, 2025).
The President defendedhis action as “patriotic purpose”, adding that the money was used to promote activities that help to defeat enemy schemes in Uganda.However, many Ugandans perceived it as political bribery of Members of Parliament. The President said the money was channeled through classified funding and added that such money is a strategic tool for national security and unity (Odongo, 2025). However, the cash bonanza, like in the past, has instead made the political security of the Members of Parliament insecure asit disconnected them from the struggling Ugandans.
Voters are now arguing that instead of the Members of Parliament serving the public interest they are accepting money inducements to serve the interests of the President. One school of thought has reasoned that the President wanted to spoil the Members of Parliament in the public space so that the majority are not voted back in Parliament; that he wanted new ones he can manipulate using money towards achieving his political ends in Uganda.
The President payout has also revived the enduring questions about classified expenditure, patronage and accountability in Parliament (Odongo, 2025) as well as political bribery by the President. In 2021 each of the current Members of Parliament received Shs 200m in what was officially labelled as a car grant. This was not unlike the vehicle’sgovernment buys for the religious as soon as they assume leadership of their religions. One school of thought has argued that most religious leaders are silent about the problems, issues, oppression and injustices reigned on the people because of the vehicles donated to them by the President.
The majority of the Members of Parliament were new in 2021 as almost 90% of the previous Parliament were voted out during the January 2021 Parliamentary elections for having removed the Presidential term limits or Presidential age limits, thereby allowing the President to rule like President -for-life. However, the presidential money bonanza to Members of Parliament tends to lower the esteem of Parliament in the face of the Executive and the Public while enhancing Executive influence over it. I have seized the opportunity to review, analyse and critique the whole subject of supplementary budgets from which the classified budget has benefited hugely over the years at the expense of social development.
In conclusion, there is need for the Uganda government to reduce budget indiscipline by incorporating the practice of supplementary budgeting into the national budget since it is benefiting the President far more than it is benefitting Ugandans and burdening the taxpayers through financial wastage and financial haemorrhage.
There is also need to recover the independence of the Parliament of Uganda from the President of Uganda, probably by de-caucusing it since caucusing is causing more harm than good as the President uses the NRM Caucus to get all the supplementary budget to swell the classified budget to achieve his political and economic ends at the expense of Ugandans; and to rethink the value of Classified Budget.
Currently, and over time, the Classified budget has been abused by the President of Uganda in pursuit of his personalist political and economic interests of power and domination of the political space of Uganda. I will not be far-fetched to state that both the Executive and the Parliament of Uganda are partners in the de-democratisation of Uganda with reference to the joint way they behave towards public funds. They have de-democratised and militarised budgeting at the expense of Uganda and Ugandans, thereby erasing meaningful and effective social development for all.
For God and My Country.
Oweyegha-Afunaduula is a member of Center for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis
