The game of football will continue to be the biggest beneficiary as far as government funding is concerned following the release of the new allocations in the 2019-20 financial year.
Whereas there have been many voices from other sports federations about the unfair distribution of the national cake, government through National Council of Sports (NCS) has not changed from last year’s script in as far as allocations are concerned.
With the national budget expected to be read this Thursday (today), government funding towards sports has increased from 17.5 billion shillings to 26 billion shillings in the new financial year.
Football will take a lion’s share of ten billion shillings which is 38% of the total budget. This is an increase from the four billion shillings that was allocated to football in the last financial year.
It should be noted that because there was a supplementary budget made towards sports, the funding for football last year moved up to ten billion shillings.
This was purposely to cater for Uganda Cranes and Uganda Cubs preparations for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt and 2019 U17 Africa Cup of Nations in Tanzania respectively.
Netball comes second with two billion shillings an increase of 500 million shillings from the funding they got last year.
Athletics will take home 1.1 billion shillings moving from 800 million shillings earned in the previous financial year.
Basketball follows closely at one billion shillings while boxing and University Sports Association will each take 700 million shillings.
In the new budget, the game of rugby will receive 300 million shillings while Paralympic games have been allocated 250 million shillings.
The rest of the other sports disciplines such as cricket, badminton, hockey, chess, pool, and cycling among others will have a funding of two billion shillings set aside.
However, benefiting from the aforementioned funding will need a sports federation to show cause to NCS before getting the money.
National Council of Sports will retain 9.24 billion shillings to cater for operational costs and contribution towards Uganda Secondary School Association (USSA) games and Copa Coca Cola.
Budget Allocation
Football – 10 bn
Netball- 2 bn
Others – 2 bn
Athletics – 1.1 bn
Basketball – 1 bn
University Sports – 700 M
Boxing – 700 M
Rugby -300 M
Paralympics – 250 M
NCS – 9.24 billion