The National Council of Sports (NCS) announced a significant budget cut of UGX 20.3 billion to national sports federations for the 2024/25 financial year, a decision that has affected nearly half of the 51 sports federations and associations in Uganda.
This reduction sparked concern and raised questions within the sports community about the future of various sports programmes.
In an appearance on NBS Sport, The NCS Chairman, Ambrose Tashobya addressed these concerns explaning of the rationale behind the budget cuts.
Tashobya highlighted that some of the funds were urgently reallocated to ensure Uganda’s participation in the upcoming Olympic Games.
“We had to make some immediate interventions because the Olympics are now 18 days away, so we didn’t want to cause panic. We had to make adjustments,” he stated.
To facilitate this, the NCS reallocated UGX 6 Billion from the budgets of major federations, resulting in a 17.21% cut.
“We made an intervention to make sure that we take our team to the Olympics with no hiccups. We took that decision as the National Council of Sports but also communicated that decision to the ministry in order to see that the money is reinstated back to the federations,” Tashobya explained.
The chairman also revealed that part of the money was set aside to ensure that the country is in line with the hosting of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, explaining that as a country, Uganda needs $30 million by January 2025 to show it’s readiness to host the tournament.
The budget cut comes after the reconsideration of the Appropriation Bill following the announcement of the 2024/25 financial year budget last month.
This reassessment led to reductions that have affected the operational capacities of various sports federations and associations.
The readjustments saw the funding for the Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) reduced from the UGX 17 billion allocated in the 2023/24 financial year to UGX 14 billion.
However even after the cut, the football federation will still receive a significant potion of the sports budget compared to other federations and associations.
Addressing the distribution of funds, Tashobya shed light on why FUFA continues to receive the lions share saying, “The categorisation was informed by the appropriation by Parliament. Appropriation is their role while allocation is ours,” he said.
He stated that the Parliament made the appropriation and as the National Council of Sports, who are in charge of allocation, they didn’t want to dissent from the decisions of the law making body.
When asked whether football gets the lion’s share because of the power it has in Parliament, Tashobya differed, laborating on the popularity and extensive reach of football in Uganda.
“Football as a sport is a big sport and engaged in by very many people. That’s why it gets the lion’s share,” he explained.
“We made a survey across the country about the popular sports disciplines, and all the districts that we asked, football was one of them,” he added.
Despite the current financial constraints, Tashobya expressed a commitment to ensuring that other federations receive adequate resources in future to operate effectively.
“So for me, the first step is to see how we get the other federations to a place where they have comfortable resources to be able to run,” he said.
