By Joachim Buwembo
In Summary
Usually, the incumbent or the party in power has a hard time
telling voters about corruption since the vice tends to be associated
with control of state power.
But the ruling CCM in Tanzania managed to turn this conventional
perspective on its head, saying they were cleaning up and the corrupt
guys were fleeing the party to take refuge in the opposition.
The claim was convincing because the CCM presidential candidate
was a known no-nonsense operator with a track record of zero tolerance
to corruption and laziness.
In Uganda, both the opposition presidential candidates and the
incumbent are vowing to fight corruption. But here, fighting corruption
means a lot more than just cleaning up.
Unlike Tanzania where the country’s vast wealth is largely in
potential form requiring exploitation and management by a transparent
administration, Uganda already has enough cash entering the state
coffers to deliver a dramatically higher quality and quantity of
services if it wasn’t stolen.
In Tanzania, corruption delays exploitation of natural wealth
and involvement of a large part of the population in profitable economic
processes. And Tanzania is also an investor’s paradise as far as tax
holidays and exemptions are concerned, denying considerable revenue to
the state.
But while Uganda collects a small portion of GDP as tax, it is
already enough to provide good services, but does not because
unfortunately an unacceptably high portion of it gets misallocated and a
lot more simply gets stolen.
Opposition candidates are currently putting the figure of cash
stolen from the annual budgetary outlays at about $650 million, against
expected tax collections of about $3.5 billion this financial year.
So why should theft of ‘a mere’ $650 million or 18.5% of the
revenue collection cause a whole difference between good services and
scandalously hopeless services?
Well, it is not only direct theft that takes resources away from
the taxpayer. The capacity of the Executive to use resources as it
wishes that takes resources away from the people.
For example, Uganda’s cost of public administration is blatantly
high. The country supports over 70 ministers and some 400 Members of
Parliament each of whom takes home half a million dollars by the end of
the five year electoral term.
Added to these are an unbelievable number of elected officials –
over one and a half million across the population, all of whom require
allowances of one form or another. Then there are presidential advisers,
resident district commissioners and so on and so forth.
But most immoral is the portion of the health budget that is
spent on taking a few powerful families abroad for medical tourism.
The annual national health budget is about $500million but some
estimates put the portion the few powerful families take for medical
tourism at $150million. In public maternity centres, midwives are said
to hold mobile phone torches between their teeth to deliver babies.
Reason? No light.
So that is the difference between management of public resources
between Uganda and Tanzania. In both countries, corruption is powerful
negative factor. With Tanzania, it delays the conversion of potential
into cash, in Uganda, it takes cash away from the intended
beneficiaries.
Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: buwembo@gmail.com
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