The debate about recurrent expenditure has been long and strident.
The law requires that at least 30 per cent of the total national budget be set aside for development expenditure.
Recurrent expenditure is an expenditure that has been met and recorded. That means that expenses are recognised when they have been incurred.
Unlike recurrent, development projects take long to finalise and make payments. Recurrent expenditures are daily or even monthly expenditures like paying wages or salaries. This means that recurrent expenditures are usually ongoing.
Even when the government does not have sufficient resources, some of the recurrent expenditures, like salaries, cannot wait. Then what you will end up seeing is that the recurrent expenditures are higher than the development expenses at any one given time in terms of what has been entered into the books.
Having said that, the argument behind the 30 per cent and 70 per cent was that there is a certain point of development where you require to invest large sums of capital expenses.
If you look at one of our highest spenders, education, the biggest cost is not development but, actually, salaries, textbooks and educational materials. In a case like this, you find that the government has already invested a lot on infrastructure and what it does is to recruit more teachers and supply learning materials.
If you look at healthcare, you also have a situation in which the biggest challenge is salaries and allowances of healthcare workers.
When you go to the police, you realise that the government is using a lot of resources to improve the working terms for police officers including giving them insurance covers.
That does suggest that you are likely to have more and more going to recurrent expenditure.
It was not actually a scientific measure that 70 per cent is what you need for recurrent expenditure. It is an estimate.
It is not necessarily a bad thing that we spend more on recurrent than development.
However, what we need to ask ourselves is whether the expenditure is necessary. If it is not necessary then there is a problem because that is wasteful spending.
The writer is the country manager International Budget Partnership
