EFFECTS OF COVID – 19 ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE IN UGANDA

Abstract

To fight the continuous spread of the Corona Virus in Uganda, many measures were put in place by the government which involved total lockdown where movements of people were restrained, businesses were closed, schools and institutions of learning were closed among others. The lockdown significantly disrupted the systems of the local government especially service delivery and revenue mobilization which consequently affected the development, health, and people’s livelihoods. Therefore, this paper makes a critical analysis on how COVID-19 has affected the local government revenue and expenditure in Uganda. The design used in this study was descriptive in nature and utilized only quantitative approaches. The study used secondary data obtained from published research by UN and Government of Uganda. An independent sample t-test was employed to assess whether there was a significant difference between variables. There was a significant difference between Local government annual per capita OSR during planned and during COVID-19 period in different regions in Uganda (UGX) as indicated by a p-value (0.0001) which is less than 0.05 level of significance. The study concludes that the outbreak of COVID-19 affected the LG revenue mobilization and expenditure in Uganda. The study recommended that there is need for emergency measures by the government to ensure that local governments economically recover from the recession. This may help to increase on revenue collection to cater for the expenditure needs in the districts.