President Uhuru Kenyatta addressing the 11th Parliament during its official opening on April 16, 2013. Photo/PPS
What you need to know:
Expenditure plans show the Treasury has taken into account most of Jubilee government’s election promises.
President Uhuru Kenyatta stayed on the expansionary path of his predecessor Mwai Kibaki submitting a Sh1.654 trillion Budget for the next financial year. This represents a 13.4 per cent increase over the Sh1.459 trillion Budget for current year ending June 30.
A breakdown of the estimates indicates that the government plans to spend a whopping Sh1.01 trillion on its ministries and departments, Sh198.2 billion on the counties while the Judiciary and Parliament will spend Sh22 billion and Sh24 billion respectively.
An additional Sh380.3 billion has been set aside for the Consolidated Fund Services (CFS), the account that holds money for public officers’ pension, salaries and allowances for constitutional offices and payment of public debt.
The estimates, introduced in Parliament on Wednesday, show that the CFS has been allocated Sh15.9 billion or 4.4 per cent more than this year’s revised estimate amount of Sh364.4 billion.
The estimates show that the Treasury has worked through a tight fiscal space to accommodate some of the Budget-busting election promises of Mr Kenyatta’s Jubilee coalition, increasing by large margins the allocations to key ministries of Education, Agriculture, Internal Security and Health.
President Kenyatta has promised a free laptop for every child entering Class One next year, free maternity and primary healthcare, improved security and a reduction in the cost of living through containment of prices of basic commodities such as food.
By the end of February, when the Treasury consulted with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on budget progress, the revised estimate for this year was Sh1.172 trillion, indicating that the Sh1.6 trillion Budget is Sh500 billion higher than the actual expenditure for the current financial year.
The huge gap between the budget and actual expenditure has been attributed to low absorption capacity in government ministries and a scarcity of funds arising from the failure by the taxman to realise his revenue targets.
The Treasury said on Thursday that it did not immediately have the revised estimates for the fiscal year that ends in June.
“The figures are not available because the new ministries do not compare one-for-one with the former ministries,” said a Mr Onderi from the Treasury’s Budget Department.
The National government’s estimates tabled in Parliament shows that the Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC) has been allocated Sh143.1 billion or 8.6 per cent of the total budget, making it the single largest item in the government’s spending plan. The allocation also reflects the size of the commission’s workforce of more than 270,000.
TSC is now an independent entity from the Ministry of Education.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology comes in second with Sh130.6 billion taking the sector’s total allocation to Sh274 billion or 16.6 per cent of the total government spending for the year.
The allocation is in line with Kenya’s big infrastructure dreams that include construction of new roads, airports, railways, harbours, and IT platforms. Security also got its place in the list of top priorities getting Sh108.9 billion from the budget excluding the Sh13 billion allocated to the NIS.
The allocation points to the Kenyatta government’s determination to strengthen its muscles in the face of rising wave of insecurity that has claimed hundreds of lives since late last year.
Kenya has been under a wave of terrorist attacks since its forces entered neighbouring Somalia in pursuit of Al Shabaab militia who had wage daring attacks in its territory abducting foreigners.
For the first time, the allotments were provided in the Programme-Based Budgeting (PBB) format, which donors such as the IMF have been pushing for.
The spending plan is different in its definition of the objectives for allocations, expected outputs and the indicators against which it will be assessed. The estimates also indicate that the government plans to spend Sh121.5 billion to pay loans compared to the revised 2012-13 figure of Sh123.6 billion.
Pension payments will rise to Sh38.2 billion from Sh28.1 billion in the revised budget for this year while salaries and allowances will total Sh3.4 billion from Sh3.3 billion in this financial year.
Guaranteed debt to parastatals and other government departments and agencies will however fall to Sh1.3 billion from Sh1.5 billion this financial year. there is a policy reduce transfers to parastatals and other government agencies.
