THE Chairman of the East African Community (EAC) regional Council of Ministers, Dr Harrison Mwakyembe, is on Thursday expected to table 201bn/- EAC budget for 2015/16 fiscal year.

Members of the East African Legislative Assembly, who have just started their session here, will be debating and expected to approve the East African Budget for the next fiscal year.

The EAC will this year table a regional budget estimated at 110 million USD, nearly 204bn/-, to cover the fiscal year 2015-2016, which starts next month.

An official report from the Arusha-based EAC Secretariat as relayed by Mr Richard Owora Othieno, stated that the new budget estimates were agreed during the just-ended 31st Extraordinary meeting of the regional Council of Ministers’ meeting, which was recently held in Burundi.

The meeting considered and adopted the fiscal year budget estimates amounting to 110,660,098 US dollars to fund the Secretariat, East African Legislative Assembly, East African Court of Justice and the Lake Victoria Basin Commission.

The new budget is also to cater for the East African Science and Technology Commission, the East African Kiswahili Commission, the East African Health Research Commission, the East African Competition Authority, the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA), and the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organisation (LVFO).

Each of the five EAC Partner State is to contribute 8,378,107.60 US dollars towards the proposed EAC budget and each Partner State is to contribute 824,445.60 US Dollars towards the IUCEA Budget for 2015/2016.

The council directed the Secretariat to fund the budget increase amounting to 3,919,530 US dollars from the EAC General Reserve Fund.

The meeting also approved budget estimates amounting to 2,224,653 US dollars to be funded by the Partner States’ Civil Aviation Authorities and Development Partners to enable Civil Aviation Safety and Security Oversight Agency (CASSOA) discharge its mandate for the Financial Year 2015/2016. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have to contribute 379,916 US dollars each; Burundi and Rwanda to contribute 302,023US dollars each; 373,925 US dollars from the Development Partners and 106,934 US dollars from other incomes.

The EALA Plenary, which runs at the regional parliamentary headquarters from today for two weeks, will climax late next week on May 21.

It is the sixth meeting of the Third Session of the Third Assembly and is to be presided over by the Speaker, Mr Daniel Kidega.

Source: Daily News

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