National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich. Photo/ FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 16 – Finance Secretary Henry Rotich has challenged government ministries to avoid unnecessary expenditure by allocating funds to irrelevant projects.
Speaking during the launch of the 2014/2015 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), Rotich said some of the projects are being duplicated by some ministries.
He has also urged them to minimize administrative costs which he says have continued to eat into the development expenditure.
“We want to take this seriously to reduce wastage in our expenditure. It is our responsibility to ensure that there is value for taxpayers’ money,” Rotich said.
The government, he said, will also come up with policies in an effort of curtailing non-productive expenditure in the government.
“The realization of national priorities is outlined in the Vision 2030 centers on prioritization and targeting of scarce resources to high impact programmes. Granted resources are limited, considerable tradeoffs have to be made to cater for strategic priorities,” Rotich pointed out.
He also emphasized the need for the ministries and all government agencies to properly and timely utilize all the budgetary allocations to avoid funds being returned to the Treasury.
In the last financial year, ministries could not absorb over Sh300 billion.
“Public participation, good governance, transparency and accountability in public financial management are some of the key values and principles recognized in our constitution,” he said.
On the budget making processes, Rotich said his ministry will ensure that all stakeholders are involved to enhance greater ownership and deepen citizen participation in implementation, monitoring and evaluation of projects.
The launch of the 2014/2015 MTEF is intended to enable the government to understand the budget calendar, sector composition and their roles and the expected outputs.
