I have always been critical of the government spending style,mostly the centralised way of thinking the government employs in sharing the national cake,but this budget has given me a little hope that finally the government has some thinkers in the public sector.
Heres my thots on the budget;
Size - Sh. 866bn (abt $11bn) to be shared btn 37mn people is an allocation of abt $300 (Sh.20,000) per person per year. This amount is clearly not enough to provide for everyone's needs and its complicated by the disparities in allocation (example,the house speaker is to get Sh. 100mn for his house). But in all fairness,the size of the budget is limited to our wealth and there is nothing UK can do in the short run.
Out of this amount,Sh. 300bn is to be borrowed from the public while the rest is taxation. I have always been a keynesian so have no problem with govt borrowing,in our case its even better coz most of this funds would otherwise remain frozen by the unrealistic demands that the financial institutions make from the small borrowers.
Its worth noting that the govt resisted the annual urge to increase one tax or another,but for me I believe KRA has continued to ignore the obvious untaxed constituency of kenyans in informal employ. My out of the blue estimates believe this sector can increase income tax by 50-100%.
Allocations The bulk of the budget remains at the central government level and is to be drip fed to the economy from Nairobi which in my opinion is wasteful and the main contributor to corruption,but the good news and the highlight of this budget is the move by the govt to allocate more funds directly at the local levels. It was good to here the specific allocations for health facilities,schools,higher of teachers and nurses etc all with the word per constituency. (Hopefully the Mpigs will get engaged with all this projects and we can here less politicking)
In terms of sectoral allocations,(I got this from BD)
Roads and rail Sh.71bn - I don't know if this is enough,but at 9% of the budget,its as high as can be expected,our roads need constant attention as they have been in pathetic conditions. Some of the money will be distributed at the constituency level and this is more good news. I don't know about the rail system,I don't know how much they have been allocated but the rail only moves 5-7% of the cargo and we may need to forget about it as a serious contributor to our economy,we outgrew it 100 years ago.
Agriculture Sh. 11.7bn - Too little,way too little. If we want to develop as a nation,then we must feed ourselves and we cannot do this without proper investment in agriculture. How many billions are being used this year to buy relief food because kenyans are starving. Agriculture deserves atleast 3 times what it has been allocated. And this decision should be simple coz we have no choice here.
Energy Sh. 30 bn - Again,too little here,we need to secure more cheaper enegy sources,in this case the govt should be able to borrow funds directly for energy enhancement.
Education Sh 164bn - A huge allocation as expected and still obviously not enough coz on the ground,every middle income family is now spending a substantial amount of its income for their childs education in private schools. nobody trusts govt run public schools.
Health and sanitation Sh 39bn - The construction of health facilities in each constituency and the recruitment of 20 nurses is good,Our countries healh status is always wanting and is in the same category as the education sector,not working very well.
Its difficult to predict how this budget will affect the common mwananchi on the ground because its success will depend on participation by the people. But taking everything at face value,and expecting every kenyan to play their part,then the budget will whet kenyan's appetite for positive engagement in nation building.
Your thots please.
I guess if you can't win with facts,you can always pen bile-laced,xenophobic rants to distract everyone.
"The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline." James Collins