In the recent past, a number of MPs were seen submitting on the need to have several government agencies merged.

The risks of losing all the gains and strides so far made by the Government through privatisation and divestiture most probably will appear, therefore, the need for case-by-case homework, direction impact assessment and contingency leverage, owing to probable missing links suit.

The verdict to transfer those agencies with a watertight stance will protect unwinding the gains listed post the reforms and dire risk consequences.

The works ministry recently took over the activities of Face Technologies and the reaction since then has not been impressive, depicting an early warning.

The Government taking its reform policies through privatisation and divestiture sold over 74 companies, avoiding the risks and weaknesses related to public enterprises.

They included East African Distilleries, Shell Uganda, Lake Victoria Bottling Co. Ltd, Uganda Commercial Bank and several hotels.

These companies were presumptively not performing well, but the Government continued giving subsidies to leverage on their survival, triggering a decision for privatisation.

Through divestiture, the Government was able to eliminate the risk of redundancies, improved operational efficiency and reduced costs.

The prospective transfer of Uganda National Roads Authority could hit the agency with bureaucracy (red tape) inherent and typical of ministries in effect.

It will distress its operations and steady progress as per the model. The risk of human resource redundancy, brain drain and litigations are too in the white box.

The precarious risk scale will show in the pretext, Government’s divest part of their businesses due to bankruptcy, restructuring, raising cash, or reduce debt burden to create value.

The Government adopted a criterion during reforms where state-owned enterprises were categorised into five classes, including those which Government owned fully, held majority shares, minority shares and others to be fully privatised and liquidated.

Risk appetite requires logical framework pre-emption to government collapse into jack of all trades. Agencies are susceptible to bankruptcy due to high costs of operations and limited cash flows.

They tend to focus on expenditure heads and rarely on revenue generation.

An agency like Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) is doing all it can to collect taxes. Scornful, if URA is transferred to a parent, staff are likely to be laid off in preference of a lean structure.

This change can affect tax collections hitherto being done by the authority.

Post-2000, the Government categorised businesses during privatisation and divestiture on what venture the Government can get involved in and those not, providing platform for some form of devolution to other players, unwinding if any should take a gradual progression yet organic to sidestep future rescind.

Unpredictability of earnings by the agencies is a catch-22. The Government cash spot will hurt due to unself-sustaining traits.

It relies in most cases on development partners for its funds against domestic revenue generation, the mainstream government installations misuse and inefficiencies is part and parcel, the ratio could scale up with this new move.

The strategic think-tank would require setting up a strong monitoring and evaluation system, strong governance structure, risk based and applied audit, tolerable follow up on audit findings, prompt utilisation of the audit reports and use of double fold accountabilities such as evidence on the ground and paper-based accountability.

Also, managing the scepticism in some sections of human resources will see metrics of talents and, therefore, strong principle-activity relations. Paradoxically, the Government’s anti-corruption efforts, the underpinning theories could exhibit their essence as deterrence in this context.

Observed, however, is that a strong anti-corruption effort could involve putting ministries under additional regulatory scrutiny.

This yields a counterproductive spell for the managers. The less time with all the disruptions makes it difficult to achieve long-term systemic changes for better.

The management and boards of ministries are more likely to include politically exposed persons and the risk of violating sanctions, bribery and corruption regulations.

The ministries often lack the infrastructure to rigorously screen for potential conflicts.

It is also exclusively susceptible to corruption due to the powers wielded by the state. Other risks include overvaluation of agencies, low productivity, low tax base, low capital base, increased borrowings, poor infrastructural development, unwinding of economic trajectory and trend, low production and marginalisation, employment opportunities constrictions, notwithstanding our population index of 46 million people. One size does not fit all.

Several firms think that the most effective way to get ahead is to expand business boundaries through mergers and acquisitions. The Government of Uganda is in it.

This, however, should be done with clear objectives and goals. As the Government takes on this, strong teams for valuation, audit, legal, policy, monitoring and agencies involvement could give a remarkable kick off.

Otherwise, the Government could be seen moving back and forth.

The writer is a risk consultant 

By Gerald Wandera Obbo