Major changes in mini-budget as Rotich aligns spending to Big Four

National Treasury CS Henry Rotich and his PS Dr Kamau Thugge during their meeting with Senate Assembly Finance and Budget Committee on the proposed amendment on County allocation of revenue at County hall, Nairobi. [Photo by Boniface Okendo/Standard]

The National Treasury has slashed spending plans by Sh17 billion in new austerity measures.

Vocational training programmes are the greatest losers in the budget revisions, after more than Sh3 billion was moved from the training institutions in a supplementary budget tabled in the National Assembly yesterday evening.

A total of Sh16.4 billion has been granted to the Teachers Service Commission, presumably to fund the recruitment of 80,000 tutors - alluded to in the House earlier in the week.

Details of the revised budgets are still scanty. It is however clear that several development programmes have been axed from the national budget, which is now more aligned to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s 'Big Four' agenda embracing housing, security, affordable healthcare and manufacturing.

The cuts follow Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich's admission that Government expenses were running ahead of revenues, informing the need to review spending priorities.

Additional allocations have been granted to healthcare, housing, crop development and manufacturing - to be spent in the less than 100 days remaining in the current financial year.

Uhuru's pet project – the Standard Gauge Railway - received the biggest boost of Sh18 billion that will likely go to building the second phase of the railway line linking Nairobi and Naivasha.

Original budget

The line was also among the biggest beneficiaries in the original budget.

Mr Rotich has also offered Sh3.6 billion to the State Department of Housing, which is expected to go to a planned Government-backed mortgage lender.

The World Bank has already set aside more than Sh16 billion as its investment in the Kenya Mortgage Refinance Company expected to be launched this month.

The lender is expected to help Uhuru achieve his goal of enabling home development and ownership.

Livestock sector

Rotich also handed the livestock sector an additional Sh2 billion, while another Sh4 billion has been granted to the Ministry of Industrialisation.

The ministry is leading Uhuru's manufacturing agenda that is projected to create jobs and tackle runaway unemployment.

Among the worst hit sectors by the revised spending plans is energy generation and transmission, which collectively lost Sh8 billion, threatening several projects in the pipeline including the building of critical power lines.

The Ministry of Mining lost Sh1.4 billion in the mini-budget review, which is expected to affect a planned mineral survey of the country's natural resources.

Nearly Sh1 billion was slashed from the Judiciary budget while legislators lost Sh1.2 billion that chopped from the Parliamentary Service Commission's budget.