President Uhuru Kenyatta holds impromptu meeting with key budget committee

By Alphonce Shiundu

Nairobi, Kenya: President Uhuru Kenyatta Thursday held a meeting with members of a key committee that deals with approval of the budget.

The members of the Budget and Appropriations Committee (BAC) were called to State House for an informal meeting with the Head of State to discuss the provisions in the 2014/15 budget and government policies.

The chairman of the committee, Mr Mutava Musyimi (Mbeere South) had told the MPs to be ready for the afternoon date with President Kenyatta.

The meeting comes just weeks after the committee and Parliament rejected the approval of Sh1.6 billion to be paid out to Anglo Leasing firms. It was held on the day the Parliamentary Budget Office (POB) raised doubts about the Government’s ability to float the Sh36.1 billion sovereign bond. 

“We’ve had a desire to see the President for the past nine months. Some of us met him in Nanyuki (in March) but not all us were there. What he wants is a conversation,” Musyimi told the lawmakers at their meeting in Parliament buildings.

Musyimi did not expressly reveal the details of the presidential meeting, but the timing – when the MPs are working on the budget and with the Executive desperate to have the controversial Anglo Leasing payments approved – could a pointer to what was on the table.

Senior Deputy Director in the PBO, Martin Masinde, told the committee that there “was uncertainty” regarding the bond. “It is a roundabout way of telling the MPs that failure to clear the Anglo Leasing debts was going to open the door to a more expensive exercise, which might in the end prove costly to the country,” he said.

The chairman of the House committee on Constituency Development Fund, Moses Lessonet, told The Standard that the committee was keen to meet the Head of State to get his perspective on where he “wants to take the country”.

Wage bill crisis

Lessonet said the MPs were keen to have the President address the wage bill, wastage in government, security and devolution and lobby to have the money for CDF to be increased to the Sh35 billion that had been approved by the House.

But John Mbadi (Suba) was not impressed. He dismissed the meeting as a “waste of time” and an attempt by the Executive to “compromise” MPs.

“He is compromising the independence of the National Assembly. There’s no provision in law that when we make the budget, we consult the President. Even if we were to be magnanimous and agree to have a meeting with him, we ought to have waitPOB and meet him when we have substantive issues to raise,” he said.

Next week, BAC will meet the National Treasury and other state organs, as they appear before MPs to defend their respective budgets.

Proposals ignored

Meanwhile, BAC is angry that the national Treasury failed to obey House resolutions on how much money should be given to specific government State organs.

The MPs were shocked when the economists and fiscal analysts from the POB said the Treasury had ignored their proposals. They were outraged when they realised that a redundant State organ, which Parliament had scrapped, had been allocated money in the budget for the next financial year.

Musyimi got surprised when he heard that the Poverty Eradication Commission was still in the books.

“We said that it should be scrapped, and I notice that the Cabinet Secretary for Treasury Henry Rotich has given them money. The commission will have to be scrapped, perhaps with sanctions,” said Musyimi.

In the budget estimates, the commission has been allocated Sh23.5 million.