Lavish spending has been quite pervasive for many years now. It started long before the new Constitution and devolution.
Every year we talk about managing the wage bill and expenditures that are really non-essential and do not add value to mwananchi.
These non-essentials, when put together, take a significant amount of the budget. That is why every year we have a budget deficit—revenues are far much less than the needs.
We need to get serious. Some accountability needs to be put in place. Parliament should address this issue.
The Legislature should outline a clear way forward in terms of legislation, spelling out consequences of not reducing or doing away with non-essential spending.
But where Parliament is the biggest culprit, then this becomes complicated.
We have so many agencies working on accountability.
The Controller of Budget reports should provide some oversight in terms of how money is spent once approved by Parliament.
We also need the Auditor General to provide some guidance. The Auditor should give direction and draw red lines that should not be crossed in terms of budget spending.
The challenge is even if we have these institutions, and they do provide some oversight through their regular reports, there are no consequences.
The law does not give them powers to impose consequences on government officials who exceed expenditure ceilings.
So, we are looking at a serious systemic issue that needs to be addressed in terms of providing increased checks and balances.
Perhaps some increased powers for some of these oversight agencies, especially the Controller of Budget and Auditor General, to control rogue spending.
Otherwise, what is happening now will go on even as mwananchi continues to suffer because, essentially, there will be no development.
The revenue, finance and tax expert spoke to the Star