Treasury on the spot over unaccounted expenses

By JACKSON OKOTH

A parliamentary watchdog committee has given Treasury seven days to reconcile and submit all  the necessary documents to the Auditor General’s office for scrutiny.

This is to enable the Committee interrogate the 2011 Budget — including unexplained expenses as well as wastage.

“We are freezing the exercise of scrutinising public spending during the 2011 financial year until the entire verification process is complete,” said the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Ababu Namwamba.

Interrogation time

Namwamba, who is the Budalangi MP, made this ruling during a PAC meeting held to interrogate Treasury on how money was spent during the 2010/11 financial year.

The PAC has warned that if the verification process between Treasury and the Auditor-General’s office is not completed within a week, then the committee will be forced to sanction Treasury and make recommendations for action by the appointing authority. And while the Auditor-General wrote a letter to Treasury requesting for footnotes and detailed breakdown on certain questionable expenses, Treasury failed to act. It only submitted what was asked for last week.

Under scrutiny is a payment to an Information Technology firm for breach of  contract, totaling  to Sh244 million. The firm was supposed to computerise the entire Customs and Excise Department at the Kenya Revenue Authority.

“It is now clear that the idea of breach of contract by the Government is a back-door way of fleecing the Treasury. This is a loophole that needs to be plugged,” said Namwamba.

MPs blamed the penalties for breach of contract to weaknesses within the Public Procurement Act.

 Members of the Committee asked that the Attorney-General’s office be questioned on how they authorised this payment.

The PAC has also raised questions on how there was under-expenditure totaling Sh 2.7 billion in the appropriations account, which is 11 per cent of the Sh24 billion approved estimates. MPs also queried the questionable figure of Sh120 million appearing in the Government’s salary records.

Unclear expenditure

Other unsupported expenditures include Sh355 million paid out to Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) and Sh78 billion in uncollected receipts.  Also unsupported is Sh32 billion, which is a loan given to the Government by the Central Bank. “We only received detailed documentation and footnotes on the 2011 accounts last week and we are still scrutinising these records,” said the Auditor-General Richard Ouko.

During the period under review, the level of public debt rose from Sh983 billion in 2010 to Sh1.3 trillion, an increase of Sh213 billion.

It is still unclear how public debt has been growing, a trend the Parliamentary watchdog has noted as worrying.