BY BERNA NAMATA

According to implementation Strategy for the Gender Responsive Program (2009-2012) if finalised, the 2010-2011 national budget will be accompanied by a gender budget statement Bussiness Times has learnt. The statement will be produced annually to accompany the draft Finance law.
According to Elias Baingana, the National Budget Director, the statement will bring together the sector and district gender analysis of government spending with an overview of the impact of the national budget on gender inequalities.
This is to reinforce incorporation of gender issues in the national budget to facilitate sustainable economic growth and development.
The Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) is lead by the Ministry of Finance in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender and Family development and United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the World Bank as developing partners. 
When implemented in 2012, the gender responsive budgetary program will be piloted in the key sectors that include education, health, infrastructure and agriculture among the 14 sectors of the economy.
Baingana said that these sectors are crucial as they take lion’s share of the National Budget accounting for 60 percent.
"The empowerment we are looking at is not only empowerment of women. It is the empowerment of everybody. It is focusing on everybody that has not been taken care of in the past. And of course women being the majority will benefit more,” he observed.
He added that detailed training on gender responsive budgeting will be carried out in each sector.  The training will target senior officials involved in planning and budgeting in line ministries, budget agencies, and projects for at least 5 days.
"In the past budget allocation to different programmes and activities within a sector has been done without considering the needs of the different beneficiaries. We are now going to allocate resources to a programme with background information based on the needs of beneficiaries,” he said.
In addition, before implementation is extended to the remaining sectors, an assessment will be done of the effectiveness in pilot sectors to facilitate mainstreaming gender in planning and budgeting.
While the programme will not affect the National budget, the Ministry will incur extra costs in training of budget officials to equip them with necessary skills to effectively implement the programme.
However in depth training on GRB  will be preceded by sensitisation of  officials from line ministries ,budget agencies ,districts and autonomous  institutions that  benefit from the government budget  to make sure they understand  how they can mainstream gender  in the budget process .

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