By
Tom Odhiambo
Courtesy: https://www.oagkenya.go.ke/
If there is an institution in Kenya that actually plays its public watchdog role every year, then it is the Office of the Auditor-General. This is one of the few institutions in Kenya that releases what can be seen as objective and believable reports.
The Auditor-General’s office is an independent arm of the government, which is mandated by the constitution to evaluate how the government uses public resources.
This is what the Auditor-General says in the preamble to her 2019/2020 report about her office,
“The Auditor-General is mandated by the Constitution of Kenya, under Article 229, to audit and report on the use of public resources by all entities funded from public funds. These entities include; the National Government, County Governments, the Judiciary, Parliament, Statutory Bodies/State Corporations, Commissions, Independent Offices, Public Debt, Political Parties funded from public funds, other government agencies and any other entity funded from public funds. The mandate of the Auditor-General is further expounded by the Public Audit Act, 2015.”
The report further clarifies that constitutional mandate and its public significance by explaining why and when the report should be ready,
“The Constitution requires the Auditor-General to audit and submit the audit reports of the public entities to Parliament and the relevant County Assemblies by 31 December, every year. In carrying out the mandate, the Auditor-General, is also required by the Constitution under Article 229 (6) to assess and confirm whether the public entities have used the public resources entrusted to them lawfully and in an effective way.”
One may ask, but isn’t the report really about just evaluating whether public officers and institutions have used money allocated to them appropriately?
Yes, but the (in)correct use of public resources has wide constitutional implications. It affects the rule of law, democratic principles, and the sovereignty of the country, according to the Auditor-General.
Consequently, the Auditor-General is legally mandated by “… the Constitution, under Article 252, to conduct investigations, conciliations, mediations, and negotiations and to issue summons to witnesses for the purposes of investigations.”
In other words, the Auditor-General has the authority, on behalf of Kenyans, to demand that a state officer accounts for the money allocated to her or his office in a given financial year.
Which is why all Kenyans probably need to read the annual report by the Auditor-General. This report generally begins with an analysis of how the government projected its budget for the year under review and how it reported its expenditure for that year.
Thus, for tax paying citizens, this is the section where one gets to know – assuming one didn’t read the budget estimates – the amount of money the government had planned to spend and the percentage of it that it actually spent.
One of the surprises here, for instance, is that the government always falls short in its absorption of its planned expenditure. In other words, the government isn’t spending all the money it projected to spend in the financial year.
Indeed, the Auditor-General reports that the government has failed to absorb about 8.2% of its projected budget in the past 5 years.
Why would the government not spend money it had planned to? Would this mean that some development projects of social services were not delivered as planned?
Or did the government not have the correct data and information when planning the budget? Could this be one of the reasons why some government projects stall for years after they are initiated?
The Auditor-General’s report says this about the government not spending the money it should,
“Low absorption of the development budget will affect the rate of development and sustainability of services in the country while low absorption of the recurrent expenditure implies that citizens are denied requisite services which had been budgeted for. It may also imply that budgeting for expenditure may not be taking into consideration revenue collection or cashflows as informed by prior years.”
What this means for the public is that ordinary Kenyans need to participate in the budget making process but also be concerned about how the government spends public resources.
Why? Because, as the Auditor-General shows, often the government proposes projects without due consideration of the resources available for the implementation of the projects.
If one considers that even when the development projects are planned by the government, politicians claim to have influenced the initiative, then it is urgent that ordinary citizens be knowledgeable about such projects in their constituencies.
All projects have a cost implication – immediate or deferred. Indeed, the Auditor-General criticizes the government when she notes that “The projected expenditure seems to drive the revenue collection projections as opposed to actual revenue collections driving the projections of expenditures.”
In other words, the government often plans to spend money that it doesn’t have.
Consequently, it can’t deliver projects or services. Yet, when it finds itself in financial difficulties because of bad planning it sometimes increases taxes, which makes life difficult for the workers and the poor.
In some cases, because of poor planning, the government commits itself to a project, gets a contractor on site but abandons the works.
The contractor may end up suing to be paid the original quoted cost of the project despite not having completed it, citing the government not keeping part of its bargain.
Who pays for it? The taxpayer, and this is a double cost. First, the project is incomplete or may actually have to be demolished or will never be completed, for one reason or another.
Which is a loss of the already invested money but also a loss of the benefits to the would-have-been users.
Yet, secondly, it is still a significant financial loss should the government be compelled to pay the contractor (or funder) plus interest on the money invested so far. That is taxpayers’ money poured down the drain of financial incompetence and wastage.
And the Auditor-General flags such cases annually. For this reason alone, considering how there are so many such unfinished (white elephant) projects, all Kenyans need to read and discuss the Auditor-General’s report, all the way from the National Assembly to the County legislatures to the village baraza.
The writer teaches at the University of Nairobi. Tom.odhiambo@uonbi.ac.ke
