Government slashes travel, workshops, consultancy budgets

• Government has cut budgets for workshops, consultancies, fuel and travel.

• PSST Ramathan Ggoobi says enforcement of the spending restrictions will be strengthened.

• Benchmarking trips abroad will no longer be prioritised under the new measures.

• Savings will be redirected to productive sectors of the economy.

The government has announced fresh spending cuts targeting workshops, consultancies, fuel consumption and both local and foreign travel as part of efforts to reduce wasteful expenditure and redirect resources to priority sectors.

Speaking after the reading of the Shs84 trillion national budget for the 2026/27 financial year, Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury Ramathan Ggoobi said the government would tighten controls on public spending during budget implementation.

He said the reforms would also involve reviewing the size of some government entities and ensuring public funds are spent more efficiently.

“Going forward, we shall review as a government the size of some entities, the public expenditure; during the implementation of this budget we are going to cut down on areas like the money spent on workshops, consultancies, fuel, travel inland and abroad,” Ggoobi said.

“We have scaled this down. But I understand there have been some weaknesses in enforcement but we are going to enforce that.”

The government has repeatedly complained about high spending on seminars, meetings, travel allowances and consultancy services, arguing that much of the expenditure delivers little value compared to investments in infrastructure, production and service delivery.

Ggoobi defended official government travel that directly supports the country's economic interests but criticised what he described as unnecessary benchmarking trips by public officials.

“Some people attack us and say that we prevent them from travelling abroad while we ourselves are travelling. But if a minister of finance, or PSST or director do not travel to Washington, we shall not get money from the World Bank,” he said.

He added that many foreign trips undertaken by public servants in the name of learning from other countries no longer make economic sense.

“But this tendency of going to benchmark; that someone has gone to China to benchmark about road construction… we have engineers here who can build roads. So those benchmark trips are out.”

According to Ggoobi, the money saved from the cuts will be redirected to sectors that generate greater economic returns.

“We are putting that money in areas which are going to benefit us. That is what we call repurposing the budget. Moving money from less productive areas to productive areas to reduce wastage,” he said.

The announcement comes as the government seeks to maximise value from the Shs84 trillion budget while maintaining fiscal discipline ahead of the expected start of commercial oil production.

Officials say reducing non-essential expenditure will create more room for investment in wealth creation, infrastructure, industrialisation and other programmes intended to drive economic growth.