Parliament's Budget and Appropriation Committee wants the governments recurrent expenditure increased by Sh56.4 billion in the 2023/24 budget, despite President William Ruto’s push to cut down on expenditure.
The committee chaired by Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro is also proposing an additional Sh24.2 billion for development spending.
If adopted by parliament, the budget for the next financial year is expected to go up by Sh80 billion. This will further push the 2023/24 budget to Sh3.7 trillion.
This is a Sh251 billion increase from the previous administrations' budget.
The parliamentary budget office report, titled Analysis of the consolidated fund services expenditures for 2023/2024 had set the recurrent expenditure at Sh2.48 trillion.
The development budget had been set at Sh689.1 billion and county equitable share at Sh427.9 billion.
The committee said it received substantial additional requests from departmental committees amounting to Sh88.8 billion to meet various expenditure shortfalls.
“Due to prevailing resource constraints and the need to contain the fiscal deficit with a certain limit, the budget committee could not finance most of the requests,” said Nyoro.
An analysis of the consolidated fund services expenditure for the 2023-24 year shows that in an effort to cut down on pilling debt crisis, the government planned to borrow Sh532 billion loan from the local market which will be topped up by an additional Sh131.39 billion foreign borrowing.
This is part of the Kenya Kwanza's plan to cut on foreign loans and shrink the fiscal deficit.
Domestic borrowing will be the primary source for loan financing in the year 2023/24, despite a higher cost and risk impact compared to external borrowing.
The Central bank has warned that the government’s plan to heavily borrow locally strain on the local financial sector.
The late proposals come at a time that all eyes will be on National Treasury and Economic Planning Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u as he delivers his first budget statement before parliament under the Kenya Kwanza administration.
The proposal will likely pile pressure on the government's plans to cap the deficit at Sh663 billion which is set to be financed through borrowing.
The committee recommends that MPs should approve the budget estimates for the national government, Sh23 billion for the judiciary, and Sh41 billion for parliament for the fiscal year 2023/2024.
With regard to revenue, the committee notes with concern that the revenue target of Sh2.5 trillion is quite ambitious taking into account the downward revision of GDP growth projection and that ordinary revenue grows at an average of 10pc.
It notes that the reduction of the fiscal deficit from 5.7 percent to 4.7 percent is premised on the ambitious projection in tax revenue collection.
The committee however cautions that if the revenue collection target does not materialise, it will necessitate a downward revision in expenditure through a supplementary budget.
