Kampala – The East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) yesterday passed a supplementary budget of US$14, 624,494 million for the operation of the East African Community (EAC) Kenya’s Assistant Minister of East Africa Community Affairs, Peter Munya presented the budget yesterday to the assembly amid concerns that the Community is increasingly becoming reliant on donor support.He presented the budget on behalf of Kenya’s EAC affairs Minister, Musa Sirma, who is also the Chairperson of the EAC Council of Ministers. Munya said that before the end of the 2011/12financial year, US$2,154,376 million will be spent on expenditure incurred on projects and programmes under the partnership fund. US$1, 280,000 will go to the implementation of the Common Market Protocol under the Financial Sector Development and Regionalization Project funded by the World Bank. Some of the activities under this project include financial inclusion and strengthening market participation, harmonization of financial law and regulations and mutual recognition of supervisory agencies. Others are integration of financial market infrastructure, development of the regional bond market and capacity building. “The Council is also seeking approval of the supplementary budget of US$1,666,122 million to implement various activities aimed at enhancing the capacity of national and regional statutory/watchdog organs and institutions that has been programmed to end June 2012,” Munya added. Some of the contributing members to this fund are Belgium, Denmark, DFID, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Canada, and Sweden. Meanwhile, EALA lawmakers expressed concern that the regional bloc is increasingly becoming dependent on donor support with no clear direction on how resources can be mobilized. US$122million was allocated to the Secretariat for the 2011/12 financial year that began in July last year, and of this figure, donor support rose to seventy percent while partner states contributions declined to thirty percent. “We should devise means of increasing on our support because it is instead declining compared to the past,” Odette Nyiramirimo, a Rwandan EALA lawmaker said. Lydia Wanyoto a Ugandan member of EALA, said that partner states have the capacity to bridge the gap, but have devoted more resources to national priorities. She wondered why up to now no funds have been availed to the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) to enable it to establish sub registries among partner states. “Why should aggrieved East Africans travel all the way to Arusha to have their cases heard, yet there is a possibility that they can access the regional court in their home countries?” she wondered.
