Mutava team rejects request for Sh51bn budget increase

National Assembly’s Budget and Appropriations Committee chairman Mutava Musyimi. PHOTO | FILE 

By EDWIN MUTAI, emutai@ke.nationmedia.com

In Summary

• Mutava Musyimi said the additional expenditure requests would trigger instability and stifle growth.

Parliament has rejected a bid by departmental committees to increase line ministries’ spending in the next financial year by Sh51 billion, saying it would burst the budget ceiling and plunge the country into economic chaos.

Mutava Musyimi, who chairs the National Assembly’s Budget and Appropriations Committee (BAC), said the additional expenditure requests would trigger instability and stifle growth.

“Accepting requests for additional financing as advanced through the various departmental committees would increase the national government’s overall budget deficit by Sh51 billion or 3.5 per cent of the GDP,” Mr Musyimi said after a consultative forum that brought together committee chairmen, the Treasury and Cabinet secretaries.

“This would have triggered inflation, disturb the stability we need for a strong currency and mess up the economy.”

Crucial government plans expected to suffer serious setbacks in the wake of Parliament’s action include the procurement of new ferries, the hiring of teachers and the construction and equipping of tertiary education and vocational training institutes (Tivets).

Mr Musyimi said the Interior ministry had also failed to convince MPs to allocate additional Sh7.7 billion it needed to lease Administration Police vehicles (Sh6.2 billion) and Sh1.5 billion to complete the construction of county administrative offices under the economic stimulus package (ESP).

Police medical equipment

The House also rejected the ministry’s request for an additional Sh5.5 billion for police medical equipment and Sh700 million to build a forensic laboratory for the police.

The Musyimi committee last week stood down debate of its report on reallocations of the 2015/16 budget as proposed by departmental committees to give room for mediation.

Departmental committee chairmen had complained that the Musyimi team had failed to incorporate their recommendations in the final report that the Treasury will use to craft the final expenditure plan for the financial year that starts in July.

The budget committee meets tomorrow to finalise its revised report that will be tabled in the House during Wednesday’s special sitting that will discuss the mediated version of the Division of Revenue Bill, 2015.

“There will be no adjustments. We cannot accept the Sh51 billion deficit. Teachers, Tivets and ferries were the issues I went to consult the President (Uhuru Kenyatta) about but the deficit would be too much,” Mr Musyimi said.

“Despite the problems we have with the ferries, teachers and others, we have to live with what we have. We can’t increase even a cent above ceilings the Treasury has set.”

The budget team also rejected the Ministry of Transport’s bid to secure Sh3.5 billion to finance the Kenya Airports Authority’s (KAA) Greenfields project.

The ministry also failed to convince the Treasury and BAC to provide Sh700 million to buy two new ferries. The money was to be hived off the allocation to the National Fund for Restorative Justice.