National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung'wah on Wednesday asked the National Treasury to tighten its annual financial projections contained in the Supplementary Budget.
While making his remarks on the floor of the house, the United Democratic Alliance-allied lawmaker explained that realistic projections would limit the revisions to only one.
"I want to re-emphasise the need for the National Treasury to ensure that this supplementary budget as we have emphasised before that over the years, this house has called on the National Treasury to limit Supplementary budgets to at least one supplementary budget in a financial year so that whatever you plan to the annual estimates, you only revise it once," he stated.
"Otherwise, the business of having to do budgetary revisions twice or thrice in a year are not a very good budgetary practice."
Ichung'wah further argued that extreme layers of revisions disadvantaged government agencies that are likely to fail in meeting their programmes.
"It speaks volumes to the level of preparedness that we have when we are preparing our budgets," he added.
"In a way, it creates uncertainty with the implementing agencies in government as to whether we will have adequate resources to implement all the programmes that have been budgeted for in a financial year since they do not know whether that money is subject to review."
He further asked the Treasury, which is headed by Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung'u, to ensure that the economy's state of liquidity informs their supplementary budget.
Ichung'wah made the remarks after the Budget & Appropriations Committee Chairman Ndindi Nyoro tabled the committee's report on Supplementary Budget II 2023/24.
In the supplementary, the committee approved an increment of Ksh51 billion for the current financial year.
The committee further approved a decrease in the total capital expenditure for the financial year by Ksh75 billion.
Overall, the committee approved the overall decrease of Ksh24 billion in the total budget for this financial year.
"Financial prudence must guide the Treasury's budgetary-making process. The Treasury must set realistic revenue projections, and KRA needs to enhance revenue collection efforts," insisted Ichung'wah.
"Otherwise, the recurrent use of supplementary budgets within a fiscal cycle breeds uncertainty among government agencies."
