Budgets should be enforced with some discipline

One refreshing aspect of the 2020 Budget was not only its attempt to tame the careless heaping of numbers upon others to respond to the completely looney perception that budgets must increase year on year to feed the fiction that political objectives must be seen to grow more ambitious annually, but that the new Cabinet secretary promised that he could continue demanding fiscal discipline from his team at Treasury.

Indiscipline, not lack of money, has been the most nettlesome problem at Treasury.

That indiscipline fed off the very unhealthy alliance with a corrupt political ecosystem that long ago failed the test of accountability and reasonableness.

Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani made good his promise to present a budget containing a healthy dose of realism.

He tried to keep it under the impractical ceiling that his predecessor Henry Rotich left it, except for the exceptional numbers that he had to introduce to respond to the unplanned and extraordinary expenditures to mitigate the Covid-19 ravages.

Whereas the measures introduced have elicited both jeers and cheers, the most critical factor of success to me is how efficiently the Sh633 billion allocated to development expenditure will be spent.

It obviously is not an excessive amount of money compared to the Sh1.82 trillion that will go into recurrent expenditure but it still is a significant amount that, if well spent, could make a discernible difference on the country’s development.

That if is the big question.

By his own words, CS Yatani has spent the better part of a year since he was appointed trying to instil discipline. The early days were spent trying to rationalise the budget that had been passed and identify areas of savings, especially in the recurrent expenditure.

There are very many areas here, with travel being one of the more obvious ones.

In some instances, he found that government was sending as many as 60 people on a single mission that could be executed by five people.

Another example was the binge spending that government departments indulge in at the end of financial years. Departments unnecessarily replace furniture and ICT equipment that is in perfect shape just because they find that they have unspent cash that they will be forced to surrender at the end of the year.

Both examples of course speak to indiscipline and lack of planning. Lack of discipline is what could drive a person to approve a trip for 60 people.

The irony is that it is not only recurrent expenditure that is subjected to such incredibly fickle management. Development expenditure that is supposed to go into providing or improving infrastructure for education, health, transport, security, housing, and so on, often is wasted just as much.

All government allocations are made against a specific project. It is therefore implausible that cash can remain unspent for months while a project identified as a priority wastes away, accumulating other costs.

Some projects have become cash cows for corrupt officials that connive with the implementing agencies to ensure that there are delays to completion, leading to cost escalations to generate cash that is then stolen.

Mr Yatani has his work cut out but he has started well. The Covid-19 pandemic complicates his assignment but he should focus on the big picture since the pandemic is not going anywhere. If he can sustain the pressure on his team to perform, they will force that ethic on others and even with a modest improvement, the effect on the ground will be profound.

 Tom Mshindi is a former Chief Editor of the Nation Group and is now Managing Partner at Blue Crane Global consulting., @tmshindi