On Tuesday, the BBI taskforce officially submitted the Building Bridges Initiative report to President Uhuru Kenyatta at State House Nairobi. Also present were, Deputy President William Ruto and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The President convened a major meeting at the Bomas of Kenya on Wednesday where the report was officially released to the public.
Anong the key issues addressed in the report were corruption, divisive elections, devolution, lack of national ethos among others. The report revealed that the National Treasury and the Central Bank of Kenya had estimated that
Kenya’s Public Debt now stands at KES 5.7 Trillion, a big threat to the realization of shared prosperity. Among the measures proposed to be put in suggested by the report was a proper Debt Management scheme.
The National Budget and Appropriations Committee has concurred BBI Report and is proposing the country establishes an Independent Office for Debt Management by March 2020, as concerns over surging debt levels escalate. This proposal is an indictment from the Director of Public Debt Management and National Treasury which is tasked with debt policy, strategy and risk management, a month after the senate and the national assembly gave the green light for the revision of the country’s debt ceiling.
For the financial year 2020, the National Budget and Appropriation Assembly Committee have spared the Judiciary, the parliament, and all ministries department and agencies, slashes in the budget, as had been proposed in the supplementary Budget. It had been proposed a 4.9 Billion shillings slash in the current parliamentary service commission budget, a Ksh1.5 Billion reduction in Judiciary to trim expenditure in the face of below-target revenue performance.
BBI report now recommends allocation of 45% of the national revenue to devolved governments (13.5% to regional governments and 26.5% to county governments). It has also proposed a review on the budget management at national and devolved levels and address areas of budget leakage and a declaration on a moratorium on further borrowing until an audit on the current debt has been dealt with.
