The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has trimmed its 2024/25 procurement budget by 20.6 percent, compared to the previous year, on the back of suppressed budgetary allocations by the National Treasury.
The taxman’s annual purchase plan for the 12 months ending June 2025 indicates that it will spend Sh8.2 billion on capital, recurrent, and development purchases-- marking a scale down from the Sh10.3 billion spent during a corresponding period last year.
The plan showed that the procurement of development items has taken the biggest hit following a Sh1.8 billion slash to Sh1.2 billion, down from Sh2.95 billion last year.
On total capital procurement, the taxman has made a Sh351.2 million reduction to Sh48.5 million down from Sh399.7 million spent last year, while the budget for recurrent procurement has been cut by Sh527.7 million from Sh6.2 billion to Sh5.6 billion.
Donor-funded procurement, however, increased 85.7 percent to Sh1.3 billion up from Sh742.4 million last year.
During the current fiscal year, allocation reserved for the Buy Kenya Build Kenya (BKBK) initiative has been pegged at Sh3.3 billion up from Sh2.7 billion last year, while the procurement sourcing room with regard to the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (Agpo) targeting youth and women expanded to Sh510.9 million up from Sh232.6 million.
The trimmed procurement budget comes at a time annual exchequer allocations to KRA have been thinning, dropping to Sh22.33 billion in the current fiscal year down from Sh23.7 billion last year, which was, in turn, a dip from Sh26.3 billion the previous year.
The taxman has been pushing for the doubling of its budgetary allocation from the government to at least two percent of exchequer revenues netted each year as part of its strategy to boost capacity in the race to enhance collections.
Speaking at the national Taxpayers’ Day celebrations at State House Nairobi in November last year, former KRA chairman Anthony Mwaura admitted that the agency was underfunded.
“Our staff are even buying their tissue paper and the printing papers… Our staff are not even able to access medical services,” Mr Mwaura said at the time.
In its ninth corporate plan published in October last year, KRA revealed that negotiating with the National Treasury to raise the allocation to two percent is, however, just one of the resource mobilisation strategies it will employ over the next five years.
