Ineffective operational budget management negatively affects manufacturing firms’ procurement performance. This paper investigates the impact of operational budgeting on procurement performance among manufacturing firms within the Jinja industrial hub in Uganda. A self-administered research instrument was used to collect the data on the operational budgeting variables of budgeting approaches, budget reviews, budgeting ethics, and expense forecasts. The study adopted a survey-based approach and a stratified simple random sampling technique to collect the data from a sample of 97 manufacturing firms within the Jinja industrial hub in Uganda. The data quality control was ensured by establishing the research instrument’s internal consistency that yielded an overall Cronbach’s reliability coefficient of 0.80. Correlation analysis and regression analysis techniques were applied to analyze the data. The study revealed significant positive correlations (p < 0.01) between all the variables of operational budgeting and procurement performance of manufacturing firms within the Jinja industrial hub in Uganda. The multiple regression analysis results indicated that R2 = 29.5% and Adj.R2 = 25.9%. Furthermore, for the whole multiple regression analysis model F(4,80) = 8.357, p < 0.001, which signified that there was a significant impact of operational budgeting on procurement performance among manufacturing firms within the Jinja industrial hub in Uganda. The authors recommend that manufacturing firms should emphasize organizational goal attainment, practicability, cost reduction, and resource allocation efficiency when choosing budgeting approaches. Additionally, operational budgeting should be prioritized by manufacturing firms the same way as capital budgeting.
Keywords: Jinja industrial hub, Manufacturing Firms, Procurement Performance, Uganda, operational budgeting
