Ruto, Gachagua office spends KSh9 billion in seven months
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Ruto, Gachagua office spends KSh9 billion in seven months despite austerity measures to cut public expenditure
Ruto, Gachagua office spends KSh9 billion in seven months despite austerity measures to cut public expenditure.
According to official figures, President William Ruto and Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua have exceeded their full-year budget in just seven months, despite austerity measures intended to buck a historical practice of borrowing to support government operations.
According to the most recent information made public by Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u, the Executive Office of the President spent Sh9.09 billion from January through December compared to the initial projection of Sh8.64 billion for the entire year.
This amounts to a spending excess of Sh450.11 million, or 5.21 percent, of the initial 12-month budget for the Presidency that the previous administration drafted.
The additional expenditure has already been tabled in the House via a supplementary budget under the law that requires MPs to approve spending that lacked a parliamentary nod within two months.
According to the mini-budget, Prof. Ndung’u has suggested raising the budget for the Executive Office of the President by Sh5.18 billion, or 59.89 percent, to Sh13.83 billion from the original estimates.
The budget for the State House has jumped from the Sh4.37 billion allowed under former President Uhuru Kenyatta to Sh8.85 billion, and Mr. Gachagua’s office expenses have climbed from Sh914.25 million to Sh2.63 billion.
The Deputy President has also been added a separate budget of Sh450.85 million outside the Presidency, according to the supplementary estimates before the House.
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The over-expenditure by the Office of the President came in the period Ruto directed the Treasury to cut the budget for running the government by as much as Sh300 billion in measures aimed at bringing “our country to sanity” where the State does not borrow to “finance recurrent expenditure”.
Ruto also said he aimed to bring the recurrent expenditure down further next year by an undisclosed amount, in a bid to achieve a recurrent budget surplus by the third year.
Recurrent expenditure usually includes civil servants’ salaries, travel, and refreshment as well as fuel costs for the government’s fleet of vehicles.
The Treasury data show the recurrent expenditure by the Presidency for the seven-month period was 12.47 percent, or Sh931 million, more than Sh7.47 billion spent by the previous administration a year ago.
The biggest jump in recurrent expenditure for the country’s most powerful office was in December when some Sh2.19 billion was withdrawn from the exchequer against a monthly average for the period of Sh1.2 billion.
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