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{
    "id": 956335,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/956335/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 182,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba South, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "what happened in the previous financial year and projects what is likely to happen in the coming financial year. However, a lot of times we do not pay attention to it. Every quarter, the Controller of Budget prepares and submits to Parliament, as required by law, the performance of the budget for the previous quarter. We realised that much as we give sufficient attention to the approval of the Budget, we do not give equal attention to its implementation. That has a negative effect on the economy. Right now, with the problems that we have had up to now, most Government ministries, departments and agencies, including the county governments, are not spending the budget on development expenditure; they are only spending the budget on recurrent expenditure. Whereas we are aware that, that is because of the stalemate that was caused by the Division of Revenue Bill, the question one would ask is: What effect will this have on the economy given that we went for three months without spending the Budget yet the projected revenue was based on the assumption that the Budget would be spent progressively, uniformly and in a pro rata basis for the entire financial year? Those who understand matters economics and finance and those who have knowledge of these issues based on experience, like you Hon. Speaker, will agree with me that the effect on the economy is disastrous. I want to highlight a few things why we had this meeting last weekend and what we agreed on. I want to emphasise what the Chairman said. We agreed as the budget committee that we will hold a conference where we will meet with the Chairs and Vice-Chairs of all committees in this House, because we want the Committees to help this country in terms of implementation of the Budget. We get reports from the Controller of Budget and a lot of times they are financial reports. The non-financial aspect is usually not given attention. We do not want to see that the Ministry of Energy, for example, has spent 60 per cent of the budget allocated. No. What we want to see is exactly what you have said. The Ministry of Energy had programmes for the year. Continuously, we want the Departmental Committees to be holding ministries, departments and agencies accountable to explain how far they have gone with the implementation of the budget, so that the people of Kenya do not blame the National Assembly for sleeping on the job. Finally, there is something which I think we are not properly addressing as a House. The law is very clear that you cannot borrow money and spend it on recurrent expenditure. Therefore, we expect the committee of finance to be asking the Treasury when they are borrowing money, whether it is from the domestic market or external market. There must be an explanation that that money being released to Ministry X is for what programme, so that we are sure that the money that is borrowed goes directly to productive sectors of this economy. That is lacking. In fact, we borrow money for general budgetary support, which therefore means that a ministry receives money and they can use it to even pay salaries or fuel vehicles and yet that money is from Eurobond or from the domestic market. I have been talking about this and when we had a meeting of the budget committee it was proved to be s. The presentation of the PBO confirmed what has always been my fear: that we are borrowing money to cover recurrent expenditure. That is the sad reality. We need the committees of this House to help us in this. Hon. Speaker, before I sit down, if you allow me, we had a meeting which I thought was very crucial. Whereas there were a number of Chairs of Committees – I know they are also busy with other things – I think it is important to plead with them to prioritise meetings with the budget committee, especially when we will discuss implementation. I am not trying to demean the capacity of Vice-Chairs; they were there in their numbers. The responsibility still lies with the Chairs of Committees. We know how they are important. We want to plead with them that the next time we have a meeting we would want to see more Chairs of Committees, not just the The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}