Government Ahead of its Domestic Borrowing

Even before the new budget that was released by the Cabinet Secretary of Treasury Dr. Henry Rotich takes effect, the Treasury is already ahead of its domestic borrowing.

Data released now shows that the Treasury is ahead of its target domestic borrowing by 49.2 billion shillings after the borrowing was recorded at 446.6 billion shillings during the month of May just a month before the end of the 2015/2016 financial year. The target that had been set by the Treasury was 397 billion shillings.

This comes even as Kenya Revenue Authority failed to hit its revenue collection target for more than two times by more than 20 billion and 47 billion shillings respectively. Early last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered a lifestyle audit for all the Kenya Revenue Authority officials after it emerged that some of the were engaging in corruption deals. It is not known whether the lifestyle audit was carried out.

Read: Kenyan Budget Driven on Debt #BudgetonDebt

By the month of May, Kenya Revenue Authority had only managed to collect 987 billion shillings with more than 200 billion shillings below the annual target which had been projected at 1.2 trillion shillings. Early this month, Dr. Rotich read the national budget and it was said that the government needed to borrow an extra 700 billion shillings from both local and international in order to sustain the budget.

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, had already raised a red flag of Kenya’s borrowing expedition as it has gone above the average to around 52 points. The Cabinet Secretary, however, said that country was still within the borrowing limit. At one point, a report indicated that every Kenyan owed lenders at least 75,000 shillings in debt.

Last year, controversy surrounded the whereabouts of more than 250 billion shillings that had been secured as Eurobond and which the taxpayer has started paying for its interest. The government insisted that the bond had been well utilized and the matter has since been placed under the carpet.