Budget cuts for security agencies risky, MPs warn

Kenya’s security operations could suffer severe setbacks if the Treasury cuts budgets of the Ministry of Defence and the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the Departmental Committee on Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Relations warned yesterday.

Members of the team were meeting the legislators yesterday to defend their budgets ahead of today’s sitting of the National Assembly during which MPs will debate the first Supplementary Budget under the Ruto administration.

Among the State agencies and departments likely to be adversely affected are Telkom Kenya, Kenya Airways, the military and NIS. For instance, the government plans to further cut budgetary support to Kenya Airways by Sh1 billion to Sh19 billion.

In the first 2022/23 Supplementary Budget, the Treasury slashed the capital injected into the national carrier by Sh10 billion to Sh20 billion from the initial Sh30 billion as it sought to gradually eliminate State bailouts to the loss-making company.

The fresh Sh1 billion cut to the airline’s budget has been proposed by the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning whose members met the Budget and Appropriations Committee. The reduction is aimed at easing pressure on taxpayers’ money amid a high cost of debt and with drought eating a large chunk of government revenue.

Bandits crackdown

However, reducing the Ministry of Defence budget is likely to put the country at risk of increased terrorist attacks and compromise the ongoing crackdown against banditry in the North Rift.

According to the Defence committee, the Ministry of Defence’s ability to continue recruiting additional soldiers, gather intelligence and sustain security training programmes will be severely affected if the government moves ahead to rationalise its spending plan.

The Ruto administration is seeking to reduce Sh300 billion from the 2022-23 National Budget as part of measures to reduce reliance on debt, which has crossed the Sh9.1 trillion mark.

National Treasury had slashed the NIS budget by Sh10 billion as the State moves to implement an austerity plan on the expenditures of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in the current financial year, which ends in June.

Plenary session

However, the move prompted the Defence, Intelligence and Foreign relations parliamentary committee to justify to the budget committee why such funding cuts should not be implemented.

“We are giving a glimpse of NIS problems as a committee… there is a need for NIS officers. And this time round, the Defence Ministry may not be able to recruit officers because of this budget cut,” MP Nelson Koech, who was leading the defence committee, told his Budget colleagues who were sitting at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel in Nairobi ahead of today’s plenary session in the National Assembly.

The Budget and Appropriations Committee is chaired by Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro.

Treasury cut the budget for security intelligence from Sh46.127 billion to Sh36.127 billion in the financial year ending June 30. The Treasury never disclosed further details of the Sh10 billion budget cuts in supplementary estimate No.1, just indicating that there would be reductions in the security intelligence vote.

However, the Defence committee has disclosed that the budget rationalisation was mainly on the recurrent expenditure of the NIS, meaning key operations like training will be impacted.

Recurrent expenditure usually includes civil servants’ salaries, training programmes, domestic and foreign interest payments, pensions and fuel costs for government vehicles.

NIS and the Ministry of Defense budgetary spending are hardly ever open to public scrutiny. In the approved 2022/23 budget, NIS was not allocated any development expenditure.

Documents tabled by the Treasury before the Budget Committee indicate that on August 4, the Ministry of Defense received a Sh2.2 billion supplementary budget as funding to a component of Level 5 Forces Research and Referral Hospital.

This was followed by another Sh125 million supplementary funding that was requested a month later — on September 5 — by the State Department for Interior to facilitate multi-agency security teams’ operations.

Leading the defence team, Koech implored the Budget Committee to consider returning at least Sh3 billion out of the Sh10 billion that the mini-budget sliced. The request for more money comes at a time when the country is facing a dire security crisis, including the operation to crack down on bandits in the North Rift.

President William Ruto’s administration has promised to take decisive action on insecurity in the troubled areas of the North Rift region, including deploying the military to assist the police in restoring order.

There is already a month-long curfew to combat banditry mostly in parts of the Kerio Valley belt comprising Elgeyo Marakwet, Laikipia, West Pokot Baringo, Samburu and Turkana.

This plus the continued operations in the northern part of Kenya to counter-terrorism are likely to strain — or burst — the current budgetary allocation for the security team.