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GAPS: National Treasury is seeking Parliament’s approval of an additional expenditure totalling Sh26.9 billion in the current financial year to fill gaps in the budget.

In a presentation to the Budget and Appropriations Committee on the second supplementary estimates, Treasury Cabinet Secretary, Ukur Yatani requested for the approval of Sh2.5 recurrent expenditure and Sh24.4 billion capital expenditure.

Office of the president spent an additional Sh360 million, Treasury Sh1.8 billion, Ministry of health Sh3.8 billion and Sh15 billion for department of infrastructure among others.

Special approval

“Following the adjustments we have made to the votes and programmes, some programmes have exceeded the 10 per cent threshold.

We are in this regard requesting for special approval of the expenditures adjustments which are beyond the 10 per cent threshold in accordance with regulation 40(9) of the Public Finance Management Regulations 2015,” Yatani said. 

He said the Budget is facing numerous challenges including reduced economic performance in the first half of the financial year due to Covid-19 and an increased demand for additional priority expenditures posing a challenge to the implementation of the ongoing projects.

“Further to the FY 2020/21 Supplementary Estimates No.2 submitted to the National Assembly, I propose to amend the estimates under various votes. The overall change is a reduction of Sh894.5 million,” Yatani said.

The total cumulative revenue collected including A-I-A amounted to Sh1.42 trillion (12.7 per cent of GDP) against a target of Sh1.47 trillion resulting in a shortfall of Sh45 billion for the period ending April 30, 2021.

The supplementary estimates 2 seeks to address Post Covid-19 related interventions and regularise approved additional expenditure.

Yatani said the overall ministerial cumulative expenditure in the FY 2020/21 Supplementary Estimates No.2 has increased by four per cent from the FY 2020/21 original approved budget.

The Recurrent Expenditure increased by 0.3 per cent and the Development Expenditure has increased by 11.4 per cent.