This paper investigates the evolution and accounting of Uganda’s public administration expenditure from 1960 to 2009, a period
marked by profound political and economic transitions. Combining fiscal data reconstruction, archival budget reports, and interviews
with former officials, we trace how successive regimes—from the post-independence government through the Amin era, the turbulent
1980s, and the National Resistance Movement’s reformist period—altered the size, composition, and reporting of administrative
spending. The study reveals four distinct fiscal regimes: (1) 1960–1970, when cautious budgeting under the East African Currency
Board limited administrative costs to roughly one-fifth of recurrent outlays; (2) 1971–1985, when institutional collapse and
hyperinflation eroded real expenditure even as off-budget military and patronage allocations proliferated; (3) 1986–1995, when
stabilization and donor-funded reforms doubled the nominal administrative budget while new accounting codes and the creation of
the Uganda Revenue Authority improved transparency; and (4) 1996–2009, when decentralization, civil service retrenchment, and
program-based budgeting shifted spending toward local governments and service delivery units, yet aggregate administrative costs
remained stubbornly high at 20–30 percent of recurrent expenditure. We further show that the introduction of cash-budgeting in the
1990s, the adoption of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, and the shift to accrual reporting in 2006 fundamentally changed
how administrative expenditures were classified, monitored, and audited. The paper concludes that while these reforms enhanced
accountability, the resilience of administrative spending reflects entrenched political imperatives rather than mere technical budgeting
choices.