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Financial Management
According to the article by the authors, Financial management encompasses the implementation and husbandry of efficient and effective spending during the implementation of the budget.
The authors further quoting Francis McGilvery (1966 PAR; 1968 PAR), state that a financial management perspective, existing accounting and purchasing systems were revamped with the needs of the executive in mind.
Financial management also refers to the efficient and effective management of money (funds) in such a manner as to accomplish the objectives of the organization. It is the specialized function directly associated with the top management in united states.
In Uganda Despite the enactment of a number of public finance management reforms since the 1990s, misappropriation of public funds in Uganda remains a challenge. On one hand, the reforms aim to create a sound public finance management system that supports aggregate control, prioritization, accountability and efficiency in the management of public resources and the delivery of services critical to Uganda’s development goals (Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development, 2013).
These include the enactment of the Budget Act, 2001; the 2003 Public Finance and Accountability Act1 (PFAA), which repealed the Public Finance Act of 1964; the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets (PPDA) Act, 2003; the Public Finance and Accountability Regulations, (PFAR), 2003; and the Treasury Accounting Instructions (TAI), 2004; and the implementation of the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) among others. On the other hand, the prevalence of misappropriation of public funds by public servants, delays in fund disbursement, low absorption capacity by some departments, and idle, dormant bank accounts continue to have a negative impact on the delivery of public services. For example, scandals in the Office of the Prime Minister, where UGX 60 billion was stolen and UGX 340 billion was lost to ghost pensioners in the Ministry of Public Services, amounted to the equivalent of the total budget of the Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries in 2013/14 and approximately 3 % of Uganda’s total annual budget.
Public budgeting
According to public finance act, 2015, budgeting means the process by which government sets levels to efficiently collect revenues and allocate the spending of resources among all sectors to meet national objectives.
According to the authors , Public budgeting is the decision making process that allocates scarce resources of public agencies to fund public services at the local, state and national levels.
Public budgets are the documents that codify and present the budget agreements reached in the budget process.
However public budgeting can also be defined as, A government budget is a government document presenting the government’s proposed revenues and spending for a financial year that is often passed by the legislature, approved by the chief executive or president and presented by the Finance Minister to the nation.
The authors argue that budgeting is a field that was developed with an emphasis on controlling government spending, moved to an era that emphasized using the budget and budget process as an executive management tool, and in the mid 1960s had newfound emphasis in planning for multiyear expenditure programs with the advent of
The performance of the public sector can be investigated on different levels of aggregation, This articles analyzes the success of performance incentives from an individual perspective of the affected public managers. It focuses on the effects of two particular incentives, performance-related pay and performance budgeting, and discusses possible room for theoretical improvement. Both incentives are widely used in both in Uganda and many other countries around the globe with slightly different designs.
Public budgets are the documents that codify and present the budget agreements reached in the budget process. This may seem like a mundane point, but scholarship can be divided into studies of the process and studies of the documents. Process research includes macro and micro decision making, budgetary politics, and fiscal federalism. Document research includes budget format,
accountability, and transparency issues. Budget document and budget process studies are not mutually exclusive, as the reasons for altering documents invariably include efforts to alter budget process.
This article intends to enhance our understanding of how public managers respond to and make sense of performance incentives. Organizations use incentives to match management and employees’ interests. From a leadership perspective, it is important to consider that employees adjust their commitment according to the incentive scheme in an organization. Most scholars in Uganda argue that “a lack of awareness of these circumstances has led to a situation whereby it creates incentives that entice people to act in an inefficient rather than performance-oriented way, these circumstances can stifle management of a public funds.
The realities of retrenchment radically altered traditional conceptions of financial management. Bowsher (1985 PB&F) advocates for a more proactive, coordinated, and comprehensive financial management system that transcends the isolated, reactive, accounts based approach. In particular, he calls for the establishment of cash, debt, and deficit policies which are enforced through access to improved financial data and enhanced auditing procedures.
Public administration
According to the study, The last decade of general public administration scholarship has been energized with studies that extend the inter-organizational conception of public service delivery to programmatic relationships between government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and public-private partnerships in public service networks. Early roots are found in the New Public Management (NPM) models popular in the early 1990s. Born in Australia and New Zealand as a renewed effort to apply market principles to public service delivery, it sprang up in the US in the Reinventing Government reforms espoused by Osborne and Gaebler (1992) at the local level and popularized at the federal level by Vice-President Al Gore (1993).
The origins of the current public administration in Uganda can be explained by the history of public administration and politics in Uganda, which date back to the colonial times. At independence, the newly independent nation states including Uganda inherited centralized systems of governance from their former colonizers. However with the Structural Adjustment programs that set in, a new wave of events unfolded. Bringing services closer to the people became the agitation of many nations not only in the West, but in the developing Countries as well. Together with the desire to bring services closer to the people is the current NRM ideology of moving public accountability closer to the people.
Scholars have argued that, uganda decentralized its public administration structures, under the 1997 Local Governments Act, has led to more responsive, efficient and accountable local governance in Uganda. The concept of accountability entails a relationship between two parties in which one party (the accounter) has a duty to explain and to justify his or her actions to the other (accountee), the accountee can ask questions and pass verdict, and the accounter can be sanctioned. This definition focuses on the important aspects of accountability, as it highlights the significance of a relation between accounter and the accountee, stressing the role obligation and sanctions in case of deviation.
The National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power in 1986 and this was the peak of World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programs with its New Public Management reforms. Like in many of the African and Asian countries that had obtained political independence a few decades ago, the NRM immediately embarked on a decentralization path, starting with the election of Resistance Councils (RCs). apart from serving as a political method of empowerment, decentralisation was regarded as a policy aimed at improving local democracy, accountability, efficiency intra and inter-district equality, effectiveness and sustainability. Accordingly, the 1995 Constitution of Uganda and subsequently the 1997 Local Governments Act to enhance and strengthen public administration in Uganda.
Uganda, like many other developing countries embarked on decentralisation to ensure that there is efficiency in public administration and for a democratic, participatory, decentralized local government system that could sustain development and deliver services efficiently and effectively to the people (MOLG, 2012). Besides transfer of power from centre to districts, political control at local level, enhancing local economic development and improving local capacity in management of resources, decentralization policy in Uganda envisioned improvement in accountability and responsibility at the local level (MOLG, 2012).
Scholars have argued that, once a country decentralizes; there would be:
- a) responsive,
- b) efficient, and
- c) accountable governance at the local level. Despite these claims, most decentralization efforts end up without increasing the powers of local authorities or peoples , Decentralisation seems to have failed to achieve these objectives in many cases. in the Ugandan media of how service delivery in many parts of the country are in a poor state. For instance, Mbale Mnicipal Council failed to provide essential services such as garbage collection (Ssalongo, 2011).
Public administration in Uganda is a complex however it had to talk about public administration without pointing out financial management especially on taxation, The establishment of Uganda Revenue Authority is perhaps the most significant of the tax reforms which the Uganda government has put in place in the last three decades. The Uganda Revenue Authority, which henceforth I will refer to as URA, was established in September 1991 as an autonomous organization within the Ugandan Ministry of Finance, responsible for
administering all issues related to taxation in Uganda. In addition, the URA was mandated to institute any tax reforms that the organization deemed beneficial to the country. Before the establishment of URA, the assessment, collection, tax reforms and the overall administration of taxes in Uganda fell squarely under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Finance (Holmgren & Kasekende, 1999). There were three separate departments within the ministry which were responsible for handling all matters related to taxation. These include the Income Tax department, the Customs and Excise department and the Inland Revenue department
Since its inception in 1991, URA itself had its organizational structure as well as its operational departments revised with the view of strengthening its performance especially
with regard to domestic and international revenue mobilization. In 1991, URA comprised of
five departments, namely; Internal Revenue, Customs and Excise, VAT, Large Taxpayers
and the Expansion and Collection departments. Between 1994 and 1998 URA made some
Incrementalism
According to the scholars, The concept of incrementalism is a concept that believes that budgets are never actively reviewed as a whole the budgets are always a repetition of the old budget but with specific interest paid to a particular area of interest.
