The roads budget is once again on the chopping board after the Treasury slashed total spending for the programme by Sh55.6 billion, with a big chunk of the reduction being in development expenditure.
A new mini budget submitted by Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u shows that allocation towards the building of roads, or capital expenditures, was cut by Sh43 billion as the government made changes to its budget due to lower-than-expected revenue collections.
Recurrent expenditure for roads was reduced by Sh12.53 billion, bringing the total spending cut for the roads department in the current fiscal year ending next month to Sh55.6 billion.
The budget cut for the State Department of Roads constitutes more than half of the Sh84.4 billion reductions in development expenditure in the current fiscal year ending next month.
The supplementary budget was occasioned by excess spending on emergencies, including the ongoing floods that have wreaked havoc in different parts of Kenya.
However, the floods have also destroyed some of the roads, which means the government will still need to allocate more cash for repair in the subsequent budget estimates.
This means that budgetary allocation for roads in the financial year 2023/24 has been reduced to Sh177.1 billion, down from Sh232.7 billion that had initially been allocated to the State Department for Roads.
The roads budget has been easily picked for budget cuts by the administration of President William Ruto as the country, an indicator of a reduced flow of financing from development partners.
In the last supplementary estimates for the last financial year, the budget for the repair, construction, and rehabilitation of roads was reduced by Sh 14 billion.
President Ruto, who inherited a government with a high debt burden, has signalled his intention to move away from the large debt-funded ticket projects.
Dr Ruto's predecessor took up a lot of debt to build major roads such as the bypasses and ring roads which while opening up the country, have increased the country's debts.
The building of major highways started with the Chinese-built Thika Superhighway by the administration of the late President Mwai Kibaki.
Kenyatta would continue with the trend of tapping the Chinese contractors in building the roads, although with time he moved to the Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement, under which the Nairobi Expressway which runs from Westlands to Mlolongo was built.
The Nairobi-Nakuru-Mau Summit was the other major project by the Uhuru regime but which has since been cancelled by the Kenya Kwanza administration.
The French contractors, the government argued, had come up with high user fees that made the project untenable.
The Kenya National Highways Authority (Kenha) said in a statement that to cushion the investors in the Mau Summit Road from uncertainties of traffic, the Government adopted the Availability Based Service Payment model to guarantee investors returns "which now has reached unaffordable levels due to the contracted price indexation on the annual Service Payments hence making the project unaffordable."
