Treasury To Cut Budget To The Ministry Of Health By Ksh 10 Billion

The National Treasury has come up with a supplementary budget in the wake of the fast-spreading Coronavirus across the country.

The proposed budget will be tabled to the National Assembly for debate and approval on 22^nd April 2020 and one that is likely to elicit a lot of reactions from Kenyans.

The Treasury proposes a 9.7 billion shilling decline in the gross total supplementary budget to 2,803.1 billion shillings from 2,812.8 billion shillings. “We, however, note this is still a 2.5 percent rise from the initial approved budget.”

The National Treasury proposes a 10.6 percent decline in the supplementary budget allocation for the Ministry of Health to 103.4 billion shillings from 115.6 billion shillings.

The decline in expenditure is mainly attributable to the rationalization of the allocation to the Preventive, Promotive and Reproductive Maternal Neo-natal Child & Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) declining sharply by 48.8 percent to 6.3 billion shillings from 12.3 billion shillings.

To address the COVID-19 impact on the economy, the Ministry of Health has however been allocated an extra 3.9 billion for the recruitment of health workers and to fund the proposed COVID-19 Emergency Response Project.

The infrastructure docket has seen its budget enhanced by 44.1 billion shillings which were the only notable increment to 237.9 billion shillings from the earlier approved 193.8 billion shillings.

According to the budget books, as published by the National Treasury, the increase is mainly attributable to payment of outstanding pending bills which is in line with the Government’s plan of paying pending bills to suppliers and quickly process tax refunds for firms to support the economy in the face of the coronavirus crisis.

The highest notable decline in expenditure was on the State Department of ICT, which saw a 26.8 percent decline in expenditure to 21.3 billion shillings from 29.1 billion shillings in the previously approved estimates, attributable to budget rationalization as per the budget books, which saw the major decline being recorded in ICT Infrastructure Development by 5.3 billion shillings to 16.4 billion shillings from the earlier approved estimate of 21.7 billion shillings.

Consolidated Fund Services has seen an 8.0 percent increase in the estimates to 870.5 billion shillings from the initial 805.8 billion shillings with the budget allocations for external and internal interest redemptions increasing by 11.8 percent to 778.8 billion shillings from 696.6 billion.

Notably, however, the external debt redemptions have declined by 12.6 percent to 131.9 billion shillings from Kshs 150.9 billion shillings in the previously approved estimates, with a notable decline being in the redemptions to Exim bank of China by 10.5 billion shillings to 23.0 billion shillings from 33.6 billion shillings in the initial estimates.