Kenya: The National Treasury has ordered all Cabinet secretaries to give an audit of their spending so far in order to free all the money that is unlikely to be spent in the next four months and divert it to urgent projects.
The order came even as Treasury revealed that it had rejected a Sh60 billion additional funds request from ministries.
Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich told a parliamentary committee that the memo to the ministries targeted projects that were yet to begin but whose ground-breaking was expected in the current financial year.
"They have to give us the status of the expenditure so we can see what to rationalise. Clearly, there are some projects that have not taken off," said Mr Rotich at a meeting with the Budget and Appropriations Committee in Nairobi's County Hall yesterday.
The deadline for the ministries is end of this month so the National Treasury can prepare the Supplementary Appropriations Act to legalise the planned re-allocations.
Rotich said the ministries had asked for a total of Sh118 billion in the supplementary budget, but he had rejected the requests that appeared to be impulsive.
But the committee members sought to know why the National Treasury had changed the format of the documents to make it difficult for scrutiny.
"With this format, which is different from the one of the budget, it is difficult for us to track the programmes that are being affected with the additional funds. Please don't bring things to the committee that do not conform to the agreed formula," said Mutava Musyimi, the chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee.
Mr Musyimi also sought to know why it was necessary to send Sh2.6 billion to parastatals at a time when there was an on-going process to merge some or abolish non-performing ones.
"When you say we do the transfers to these parastatals, the message you are sending to us is that you are back-tracking on the reform agenda," said Musyimi, alluding to the task force that recommended drastic reforms on parastatals.
The Treasury said it needed Sh1.87 for Level 5 hospitals; Sh2.95 billion for emergencies; Sh7.5 billion for pending bills in the electoral commission, Ministry of Defence, the National Treasury and the Ministry of Transport; Sh9 billion for security; Sh8.9 billion for operations and maintenance in Parliament and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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