Speaker Kenneth Marende talks to prisoners at Kamiti Maximum Prison. The prisons department was seeking Sh33.5 billion for staff houses in the 2012/13 Budget. File
The Treasury has turned down ministerial requests for extra funding to the tune of Sh379 billion for the 2012/13 fiscal year, cash that would have increased the budget by 60 per cent from this financial year’s figure.
Factoring all the amounts requested by the ministries and departments would force the Treasury to propose more punitive tax measures or borrow more from both domestic and external sources to meet a hefty Sh1.83 trillion budget instead of the proposed Sh1.45 trillion.
Security ministries are among those seeking an extra Sh37 billion, with the Somalia war seen as the items pushing up the budget. The Ministry of Defence was given a 55 per cent rise to Sh70 billion in the 2012/13 fiscal year as recurrent expenditure, being the single largest increase in spending for the year.
From the Budget Policy Statement 2012-13, which marks ceilings set before the budget estimates are released, the requests that could not be met this financial year are classified as “pending expenditures” risk, indicating that they could only be fulfilled in future when funds become available and they are classified as a priorities.
“These expenditures are those that could not be met because ministries often ask for more than the Treasury can afford. We have to disclose the requests in line with the Fiscal Management Act,” said the deputy director of economic affairs at the Treasury Henry Rotich in an interview.
Limited resources
Mr Rotich said as resources are limited, it was impossible for the ministries to get what they had asked for. He, however, added that this is not to say that the projects would never be carried out.
The prisons department through the Ministry of Home Affairs wanted Sh33.5 billion for the construction of 14,000 housing units for its staff. Prison officers are forced to share single rooms as congestion persists and in some cases their houses have been taken by other government employees.
Early this month, a row erupted between the Ministry of Education and the prisons department over the occupation of Manyani Prison staff houses in Taita-Taveta County as they were being used by teachers from Manyani Primary School.
“Ministries often will ask for more than the Treasury can afford. All ministries are normally invited for resource bidding at the Treasury which understands the macro framework in which the budgetary resources are to be shared. But at the end of the day, they cannot exceed the ceiling set and which is dictated by available funds,” said John Mutua, the budget programme officer at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Mr Mutua said that even if the ministries and departments asked for cash that is beyond the ceiling, then the Treasury would not accommodate those needs. Among the others items on the pending expenditure is the Lamu port, for which the Public Works ministry wanted an extra Sh16 billion during this financial year.
The port project is part of the bigger Sh1.5 trillion Lamu Port South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (Lapsset), which involves building the port, railway, a road, a pipeline and an oil refinery.
Famine-mitigation
The financing is supposed to be shared between Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan. The Ministry of Agriculture wanted Sh17 billion to buy 5.7 million bags of maize as part of famine-mitigation during the financial year, but this could not be granted. The health sector wanted to increase its workers’ salaries and this would have raised its budget by Sh15 billion more, however Treasury rejected the request. The budget of the Ministry of Medical Services still rose by a significant 41 per cent or Sh11 billion due to the need to cater for rise in doctors’ salaries as well as cash for employing more nurses.
Employment of 40,000 more teachers will also have to wait longer as funds were not allocated. The Kenya National Union of Teachers is pushing for employment of more teachers.
