The National Treasury sought to increase the country’s gross total budget, coming four months after President William Ruto promised to slash the budget by nine percent.
In the Supplementary Budget for the year 2022/23, the budget is set to increase by a further 0.4 percent to Ksh.3.37 trillion from the initial Ksh.3.35 trillion.
This is driven by an increase in the recurrent expenditure by 6.6 percent to Ksh.1.49 trillion in the supplementary estimates from Ksh.1.40 trillion in the original budget.
The document reveals that the development expenditure estimate is set to reduce by 14.9 percent to Ksh.609.1 billion from the current Ksh.715.4 billion.
This cut, according to the President, is aimed at sanitising extra spending behaviour from the previous administration.
Ruto expects to achieve a recurrent budget surplus by the third year of his reign.
He intends to achieve this by slashing ministerial, executive, departmental and agency spending – which are expected to spend Ksh.2.1 billion in 12 months to June this year from the initial estimate of Ksh.2.12 trillion.
“I have instructed the National Treasury to work with ministries to find savings of Ksh.300 billion in this year’s budget. Next year, we will bring it further down so that we have a recurrent budget surplus by the third year,” said the President on September 30 last year.
