Slash State spending, accountants tell Ruto

The Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK) has asked President William Ruto to implement better measures to cut his government’s spending.

It singled out the need conduct regular cleaning and audit of payroll register, readjust civil servants’ wages and salaries and eliminate ghost workers to reduce government’s expenditure. 

“There is a need to implement the resolutions of the Third National Wage Bill Conference that emphasised on the government commitment to achieving a wage bill to revenue ratio of not more than 35 per cent by 2028,” the accountants through their chairman Philip Kakai said in a statement to newsrooms.

He further recommended national job evaluation to review the public sector workforce to promote efficiency and eliminate redundancy in line with the government’s goal of digital transformation. 

“The government should also reduce regular supplementary budgets which have often increased the size of the budget deficit. In the long term, this creates a culture of additional expedite, which adds pressure to raise more revenue,” added Kakai.

The government has also been urged to focus on the completion of already initiated projects with long-term return on investments and defer commencement of new capital projects. 

Additionally, the accountants also asked the Ruto administration to reduce expenditures in some recurrent areas such as advertisement, communication, printing hospitality, fuel, purchase of motor vehicles, refurbishments and routine maintenance. 

“The government should also adopt enhanced digitisation in delivery of government services, complete unbundling of functions to free funds from duplicated roles and functions at National and County level,” recommended accountants. 

Private sector funding

Further, Kakai called on the Kenya Kwanza administration to leverage public private partnerships (PPPs) to crowd in private sector funding and reduce reliance on government funding in achieving some of the key priority areas. The accountants also called for sealing revenue leakages and avenues of corruption. Kakai warned that revenue leakages,corruption and misappropriation of resources leads to destruction of taxpayer morale and tax apathy. 

“Such revenue losses also make it difficult for government to provide essential services commensurate to the taxes that Kenyans pay,” he added. Kakai said revenue leakage is caused by various reasons such as complicated tax systems, discretionary power on exemptions, as well as a dampened morale to pay taxes occasioned by the culture of corruption. 

He said there’s a need to among others review the penalty system on tax evasion, develop a change management strategy to address income tax matters and leverage on simplified technological solutions to enhance integration of taxpayer information systems.