Assessment of budgetary performance in government ministries, departments and agencies : a case study of Ministry of Internal Affairs

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine budgetary performance in the Ministry of Internal Affairs with specific objectives to examine the status of budgetary performance at the ministry of Internal Affairs, to establish the challenges the Ministry of Internal affairs is experiencing in improving its budgetary performance, to examine the relationship between budgeting process and budgetary performance in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and to design strategic interventions to improve budgetary performance in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A set of cross sectional, quantitative and descriptive designs were adopted for the study. The collected data was tested for reliability and analyzed using SPSS (V23). The personal characteristics of the respondents interfaced with showed that most of them had some experience in budget management with (38.3%) having work experience of between 11-15 years, (23.4%) with 6-10 years of working experience and (17.0%) with 1- 5 years of experience. From the findings of the study, the level of budgetary performance scored moderate. This implies that the Ministry has not successfully performed well in issues of budget management. Challenges still do exist in improving budgetary performance and these were mainly shortfall in the revenue collection mobilization, diversion of funds, unrealistic budget deadlines, lack of budget knowledge by the responsible personnel, presence of political influence in the budgeting cycle, increased level of corruption and donor influence in budgeting process and budget implementation. The study recommended a number of strategic interventions or strategies for improvement of budgetary performance including; the need to prioritize activities in time, encouraging staff participation during the budgeting process and budget implementation, having regular budget training sessions, need to continuously review budgets, need to promote fairness in the budgeting process and having an appropriate design for the budgeting process and budget implementation. The study furthermore investigated the xii relationship between budgeting process and budgetary performance. The study concludes that budgeting process is so critical in realizing the budgetary performance. Therefore, implementing the above strategies would resultantly improve budgetary performance. The study findings will be helpful in improving budgetary performance in government departments and agencies in Uganda and thus provide appropriate strategies to alleviate these anomalies. The study findings will also contribute to existing body of knowledge on budgetary performance particularly from the developing countries’ perspective. The study findings will further be useful to the policy makers since it will highlight the areas for improvement in the way budgetary management and control is being carried out and its related effects on service delivery in government entities.