Kenya spent Sh211.6b to pay workforce in first six months

By JAMES ANYANZWA

NAIROBI, KENYA: The National and county governments spent a massive Sh211.6 billion on salaries and operations in the first six of this financial year, an audit by the Controller of Budget reveals. This is more than three-quarters of the total amount spent during the period as the governments only used Sh70.5 billion on development.

According to the Budget Implementation Review Report by the Office of the Controller of Budget, the largest portion of the recurrent spending Sh116.1 billion or 54.9 per cent was used for personal emoluments and Sh95.3 billion (45.1 per cent) on operations and maintenance activities.

Of the amount on operations and maintenance, Sh1.04 billion (0.5 per cent) was spent on foreign travel, Sh813.6 million (0.4 per cent) on domestic travel, Sh605.7 million (0.3 per cent) on training and Sh593.5 million (0.3 per cent) on hospitality.

This is even as the country reels from ballooning public wage bill, which is clearly unsustainable. 

Kenya’s wage bill stands at 12 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This compares what the country pays in wages to what it produces. For Kenya this is quite high because the global best practice is for wages to be 7 per cent of GDP. This is starving capital spending and essential services. This leaves infrastructure, health, education, other public investments, and service delivery projects starved of cash.

It is a delicate balancing act for the government. Although Kenya’s spending pressures have been rising especially with the transition to the devolved system of government, the revenue side has not been performing well enough to fund all needs.

Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo says substantial resources in the budget are spent to meet remuneration of the public servants. “This high wage bill may not be sustainable in the medium term,” she says, adding that Government ministries, departments and agencies waste public funds on hospitality, foreign and domestic travels, training, conferences, publishing and printing services.

HIGHEST VS. LOWEST

“The escalating wage bill is also of concern given that it is likely to strain resources set aside for development expenditures.” Ms Odhiambo attributes the increased personal emoluments to the bloated workforce and lack of a national policy on staff rationalisation and salary harmonisation. She recommends that the government should streamline hiring of officers in the National and County Governments to contain the ballooning public sector wage bill.

According to the report, budgetary share to other items under the recurrent category should be further interrogated so that resources are allocated to priority areas.

“For example there is need to rationalise expenditures on items such as foreign and domestic travel, printing and advertising, training, and hospitality, conference and catering,” says report.

For instance, the report says the Teachers Service Commission had the highest expenditure on personal emoluments at Sh82 billion which was mainly attributed to salaries for all teachers while ministry of Mining had the lowest at Sh6 million.