Sakaja suffers blow as his supplementary budget is slashed

Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has been dealt a heavy blow after the office of the Controller of Budget (COB) cut down his Supplementary Budget for the ending financial year 2023/2024.

The Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang'o said some of the project funding have been reduced and some completely scrapped in the 2023/24 FY for failure to adhere to the Public Finance Management Act (PFM), 2012.

The Act provides specific guidelines on how budget variations should be conducted legally.

Section 135 of the Act states that the supplementary budget is required when there is a need to reallocate funds to different areas than those originally planned.

In its submission, the county had amended the recurrent budget expenditure for the County Public Service Board from the current Sh127 million to Sh130 million, which is an increase of Sh3.5 million.

However, upon examination, Ms Nyakang'o slashed the development budget under the Public Service Board by Sh10 million.

In the Public Service Management sector, the COB has reduced the Development Budget from Sh20 million to Sh10 million.

The development budget in the Agriculture sector has also been slashed from Sh96.3 million to Sh27.7 million.

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The development budget that had been allocated to the County Assembly has equally been reduced by Sh915 million, leaving only Sh300 million in the budget for development out of the current total budget allocation of Sh2.4 billion to the County Assembly.

In Nairobi Revenue Authority sector, which the governor has been relying to collect Sh20 billion target in the ending year, COB has scrapped off the development funding of Sh100 million which had been allocated by the governor.

Additionally, COB has further revised down the development budget in the Inclusivity Public Participation and Citizen Engagement sector.

The original development budget in the Inclusivity sector was Sh560 million, which the country through Supplementary Budget had slashed Sh175 million. 

However, that did not stop COB from reducing it by Sh476 million, only leaving the sector with a budget of Sh1.8 billion.

The Innovation and Digital Economy department has also been affected as COB reduced the development expenditure from Sh9.7 million.

The budget for the Ward Development Fund has equally been reduced by Sh655 million, leaving the sector with Sh1.3 billion, and not Sh1.96 billion as captured in the ending year.

The development budget in the Boroughs and Public Administration sector has been slashed from Sh1.19 billion to Sh748 million.

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Health department has not been spared by COB, downgrading Sakaja’s development budget from Sh1.13 billion to Sh519 million.

The Mobility and Works sector has also been reduced from Sh3.3 billion to Sh1.7 billion.

Ms Nyakang'o COB stated that the reallocation of funds in the supplementary budget exceeded the ten percent limit of the total expenditure approved for some programs or sub-votes, which contravenes Section 154(2) (c) of the PFM Act.

Additionally, the COB said that some of the approvals were made without necessary approvals from the County Treasury, and in some cases, the County Assembly was not properly informed or did not approve the changes.

Governor Sakaja has also been spotted for requesting for relocation in some sectors without detailed explanations or justifications, which is a requirement under Section 154(2) (b) of the PFM Act.

Defending the Supplementary Budgets after being flagged, the County Executive Committee Member for Finance and Planning Mr Charles Kerich stated that budget estimates for the FY 2023/24 were submitted to among others make the budget alive to the realities of revenue inflows, and budget absorption among other factors.

Mr Kerich said the development budgets for County Public Service Board and Nairobi Revenue Authority were scrapped and that the allocations have been carried forward to the next financial year with the purchase of revenue mobilisation vehicles.

“The budget for the County Assembly was reduced as a result of an agreement with the County Government to provide land for construction of the administration block. The cost of acquisition of land and other attendant costs were hence knocked off the budget,” Mr Kerich said.