Budget maths not adding up and why it's in order to blame our MPs

Treasury CS Njuguna Ndungu reads the Budget Estimates 2024 /25 at the Parliament Buildings, Nairobi on June 13, 2024. [Elvis Ogina, Standard]

The sequence of events has been perfect. Our three arms of government - Executive, Legislature and Judiciary - presented their budget estimates for 2024/25. The National Assembly that makes the budget decided to top up the Executive and Judiciary estimates while slashing its own. The lesser known fact is its own budget bid was way over the ceiling, so MPs ended up getting less than what they wanted but more than their ceiling.

This is what we might call the extreme version of "budget padding"; overbidding in order to settle for less as more. In the meantime, the World Bank threw us a chuck of cash and the IMF, finally, signed off on their 7th review of monetary support we receive from them. Oh! And we also experienced close to a fortnight of public participation on our highly unpopular Finance Bill 2024.