Abstract
This study examined the effectiveness of parliamentary committees in curbing public fund mismanagement among public sector entities in Uganda, motivated by the persistent recurrence of adverse Auditor General findings despite the existence of an elaborate parliamentary oversight architecture centred on the Public Accounts Committee and the Committee on Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises. Adopting a cross-sectional quantitative design, structured questionnaires were administered to 360 accounting officers, internal auditors, and finance officers drawn from ministries, departments, agencies, and local governments across the health, education, works and transport, and local government sectors, capturing organizational covariates, a composite measure of parliamentary committee oversight intensity, and a composite 0-100 Fund Mismanagement Index (FMI). Data were analysed in three stages: univariate description of sample characteristics; bivariate comparison of FMI between high- and low-oversight entities using independent-samples t-tests, chi-square tests, and Pearson correlations; and propensity score matching with Rosenbaum bounds sensitivity analysis to derive a quasi-experimental estimate of the oversight effect net of observed confounding. Univariate results showed that only 23.3% of entities experienced high oversight intensity and that the mean FMI stood at 58.67 (SD = 10.57). Bivariate analysis revealed a large and highly significant difference in mean FMI between high-oversight (49.60) and low-oversight (61.43) entities (t = -10.68, p < 0.001, Cohen's d = -1.27), alongside a significant association between sector and oversight intensity (chi2 = 13.07, p = 0.004) that signalled nonrandom allocation of parliamentary attention. After one-to-one nearest-neighbour matching on 76 pairs, which substantially improved covariate balance, the average treatment effect on the treated was -12.77 points (95% CI: - 15.72 to -9.80; p < 0.001), a finding that remained statistically significant under Rosenbaum bounds sensitivity analysis up to a hidden-bias magnitude of Gamma = 2.5. The study concluded that high parliamentary committee oversight intensity was associated with a substantial, robust reduction in public fund mismanagement, while also revealing that such intensive oversight currently reached only a minority of public entities, and recommended expanded committee capacity, stronger enforcement mechanisms for committee recommendations, and complementary financial management system reforms to extend these benefits more broadly across Uganda's public sector. Keywords: parliamentary committees, public accounts committee, public fund mismanagement, propensity score matching, sensitivity analysis, Uganda.