Editorials

Tighter budget scrutiny biggest test for Treasury

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The National Treasury. FILE PHOTO | NMG

That the National Treasury is combing through State Corporation budgets and weeding out unexplained expenditure items is an indication that more scrutiny is going into budgeting at a time corruption has becoming endemic in public institutions.

Having said that, it is worth noting that the State can only succeed in its desire to control profligate spending and wastage in public offices by getting rid of easy money that officials routinely hide in obscure and ambivalent budget lines.

For starters, the Treasury has declined to approve the 2019/20 budgets for State corporations after it discovered overshoot in spending limits and ambiguous expenditure plans. In rejecting the budgets, the Treasury also cited lack of concise explanation of the submitted documents.

In this era of transparency, nothing can be left to chance. Every proposed expenditure item needs to be listed clearly and explained in concise language to remove any doubt on the part of agencies charged with oversight.

A good budget starts with a State Corporation that acknowledges its responsibility in explaining every expenditure item to the taxpayer. The citizen invariably wants to see priority projects being given due attention in the budgets.

Otherwise, assigning billions of shillings to State Corporation chiefs on the basis of nothing else other than the gobbledygook passed off as budgets can only amount to handing out open cheques to reckless spenders.

This is part of the reason the taxpayers have been made to pay billions of shillings on ghost projects, such as non-existent dams. With such mismanagement of public resources, it is no surprise that more than 30 CEOs of State corporations are being investigated or are facing prosecution for alleged corruption.

In short, Kenyans want to see a proactive Treasury that keeps the trail of public cash, from budget preparation to the point of bill payment to ensure the taxpayer gets value for money.

Indeed, the Treasury must extend clean-up to cover all the public sector budgets. There is still too much money disappearing at the level of State departments and ministries due to poor oversight.