Budget has no errors, says Committee

By Martin Mutua

The Parliamentary Budget Committee has dismissed allegations that the current Estimates are riddled with errors and that the overall budget deficit is higher.

Committee Chairman Elias Mbau told a news conference at Parliament Buildings that proper scrutiny was carried out on the budget as soon as it was laid in the House and no anomalies were detected.

"The committee would like to assure all Kenyans that as soon as the budget was laid in the House in June, proper scrutiny of the aggregate figures was undertaken and were found to be correct."

Mbau made the remarks after he held a crisis meeting of his committee following allegations from Mars Group, a public watchdog NGO, which had over the weekend stated that MPs were reluctant to scrutinise Estimates before approving them.

Mars Group Director Mwalimu Mati had further claimed that Parliament had approved the 2010/2011 Budget with a lot of inaccuracies and errors.

Erroneous deficit

Mati further alleged that the statistical and mathematical errors in this financial year’s estimates were designed to mislead the world about the actual size of Kenya’s Budget deficit and foreign debt and to create the impression the Finance Ministry can finance a trillion-shilling budget with minimal foreign support.

Yesterday Mbau led his committee in issuing the same statistics that had been released during the Budget, putting the ordinary revenue at Sh609 billion, Appropriations in Aid at Sh78 billion, recurrent expenditure at Sh70 billion, Development at Sh7 billion and LATF adjustment at Sh1 billion. This brings the total revenue to Sh689 billion.

Mbau further said total grants were Sh40 billion and net domestic borrowing Sh105 billion bringing the total to Sh835 billion.

Committees briefed

Mbau said the experts from the Parliamentary Budget Office had fully briefed the relevant departmental committees with regard to anomalies in the estimates of revenue and expenditure of State corporations.

"Following the foregoing discussion it is apparent that the figures in the various budget documents balance and therefore the assertion that the overall budget deficit is higher is not true," he added.