Kenya tilts towards trimming spending in the 2015/ 2016 budget

Kenya’s Treasury is looking forward to an approval of its supplementary spending plans for the fiscal year ending in June.

The plan is tied to an introduction of net cuts of about 50 billion shillings, officials said.

Kenya’s finance minister, Henry Rotich said in a telephone interview with Reuters that the supplementary figures sent to parliament had increased spending in some areas, such as security, but these were outweighed by cuts elsewhere.

“We are increasing spending in some areas and cutting in others but, overall, cuts are more than increases, so we have a net cut of around 50 billion (shillings),” he said.

The government of the East African country put forward a plan to boost the budget by cutting other costs incurred in total spending just days after the International Monetary Fund agreed to lend the economy $1.5 billion, the biggest in the region.

The service is in precautionary loans to shield it from economic shocks.

The nation’s consolidated fund and recurrent expenditure will increase by 44.2 billion shillings while development expenditure will swell by 6.36 billions shillings.

A recent Exchequer report shows that 85 per cent of what has been spent so far has gone to recurrent expenditures, and servicing loans.