The Budget and Appropriation committee has proposed to increase the 2023/24 financial year budget by Ksh 80 billion.
If adopted by parliament, recurrent expenditure will go up by Ksh 56.4 billion while development expenditure will increase by Ksh 24.2 billion.
If approved by the House, the 2023/24 budget will jump to Ksh 3.6 trillion. The proposed amendments have been forwarded to Parliament for approval.
Thursday, all eyes will be on National Treasury and Economic Planning Cabinet Secretary Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u as he delivers his first budget statement before parliament under the Kenya Kwanza administration.
The Ksh 3.6 trillion 2023/24 fiscal budget is an increase of Ksh 251 billion from this financial year’s budget of Ksh 3.39 trillion.
The government plans to finance the deficit of Ksh 663 billion through borrowing. The National Treasury plans to spend Ksh 2.5 trillion on recurrent expenses and Ksh 769.3 billion on development.
The budget for the next financial year is expected to increase by Ksh 80 billion if the recommendations by the budget and appropriation committee are approved by the August house.
A report by the committee has recommended a net increase in recurrent expenditure of Ksh 56.4 billion and a net increase in development expenditure of Ksh 24.2 billion.
The Budget Committee led by its chair Ndindi Nyoro said it received substantial additional requests from departmental committees amounting to Ksh 88.8 billion to meet various expenditure shortfalls but due to prevailing resource constraints and the need to contain the fiscal deficit with a certain limit, the budget committee could not finance most of the requests.
The committee recommends to the house to approve the budget estimates for the national government, Ksh 23 billion for the judiciary, and Ksh 41 billion for parliament for the fiscal year 2023-2024.
With regard to revenue, the committee noted with concern that the revenue target of Ksh 2.5 trillion is quite ambitious taking into account the downward revision of GDP growth projection and that ordinary revenue grows at an average of 10pc.
The committee noted that the reduction of the fiscal deficit from 5.7pc to 4.7pc is premised on the ambitious projection in tax revenue collection adding that if the revenue collection target does not materialize it will necessitate a downward revision in expenditure through a supplementary budget.
