Ministries’ reluctant spending on development worrying

The poor performance of government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) has come into sharp focus this week amid reports that the President was upset by the unsatisfactory utilisation of voted funds by MDAs. According to the Controller of Budget report for the half year to December 31, 2014, the national government had utilised only 26 per cent of the total development budget for the 2014/15 financial year, amounting to Sh476 billion, leaving over Sh350 billion unutilised with only a few months left to the end of the financial year. That’s more than the total amounts allocated to the counties for the entire financial year.

The President may have been upset but the trend is nothing unusual even in the days he was at the helm of the Treasury. In the same period the previous year 2013/14, Treasury had utilised only 16 per cent of the amounts allocated for development. In entire 2012/13 financial year, only 44 per cent of the Sh453 billion voted for development expenditure was spent by Treasury. The average absorption of development expenditure has in fact declined from 55 per cent in 2011/12 to just above 46 per cent in the last financial year. This trend has always been the same for years. Despite lofty budget figures read out on the budget day, we normally realise only about half the expenditure.