Budget in Numbers: The National Government Gets the Lion’s Share

The overall allocation to the national government in this year’s budget is 1.677 trillion shillings according to a statement from the National Treasury.

The amount allocated to the National Government represents a 2.65 percent year-to-year increase from the 1.633 trillion shillings initial approved in FY2017/18 and will be 17.12 percent of anticipated 9.79 trillion shillings nominal GDP in FY2018/19.

The breakdown between national government gross recurrent and development expenditure is at 1.023 trillion shillings and 654 billion shillings respectively.

The breakdown marks an overall 61.01 percent allocation to recurrent expenditure and 38.99 percent to development expenditure.

The overall 1.677 trillion shillings appropriation-in-aid A-i-A (for both recurrent and development spending) totals 391.01 billion shillings resulting in recurrent net approved and development net estimates of 890.75 billion shillings and 394.89 billion shillings respectively to be funded directly from the Consolidated Fund.

On a year-on-year comparison, the recurrent net approved and development net estimates have grown 1.42 percent and 1.65 percent respectively from the initial FY2017/18 initial estimates.

The wage bill has ticked up 8.00 percent on year-on-year from 385.97 billion shillings to 416.86 billion shillings. This figure represents 32.42 percent of total allocation towards national government (excluding A-i-A) in FY2018/19, a slight jump from 30.47 percent in the initial FY17/18 budget. This has mainly been attributed to increases to State Department of Interior and the Teachers Service Commission.

The top three biggest vote allocation under development spending has been towards big-ticket spenders; State Department of infrastructure (112.99 billion shillings), State Department for Transport (90.42 billion shillings) and State Department for Energy (59.89 billion shillings).

The National Government also plans to make true the Big Four agenda which included the construction of 500,000 affordable housing units for Kenyans.

However, the majority of Kenyans say that the huge allocations might go into individual’s pockets if the war on corruption will not be intensified.