Budget and Appropriations Committee on Wednesday will be meeting the Judicial Service Commission as well as the Parliamentary Service Commission to receive their views on proposed cuts as contained in the Supplementary Budget Appropriations Bill tabled in the House.
This comes after MPs opposed a move by the National Treasury to cut their funding allocated to the Parliamentary Service Commission, National Government Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and the National Affirmative Action for Women Fund.
“The Budget Committee will meet tomorrow and we ask all chairs of committees to join so we can deliberate on the estimates and have a report by Thursday. Chairs of the PSC and JSC will also be invited,” Kimani Ichung’wah who chairs the committee stated.
The National Assembly Finance Committee and their Budget and Appropriations counterparts will hold separate public hearings as lawmakers embark on their bid to look at how to raise funds from various government agencies.
Eldas lawmaker Adan Keynan who also chairs the Finance Committee of the Parliamentary Service Commission told MPs that money allocated to finance Parliament’s operations will not be cut.
President Uhuru Kenyatta proposed to chop Ksh7 billion from the National Assembly, Ksh2 billion from the Senate, Ksh6 billion from CDF and Ksh8.7 from the roads emergency fund to plug a Ksh500 billion budget deficit.
He further explained that the decision was meant to ensure the government found alternative means of generating an additional Ksh7.6 billion to fill the revenue shortfall that resulted from the scrapping of the tax by the National Assembly.
“Kenya continues to upgrade the quality of her infrastructure particularly roads, airports, sea ports, standard gauge railway, energy generation among others," read part of the President’s Memorandum.
"The quality of this infrastructure is not comparable to those found in most countries in the sub region and sub-Saharan Africa,” the Head of State emphasised.
President Kenyatta explained that revenues raised will be used to fund government programmes and projects such as the free primary education, improving health facilities and investing heavily in security in the current budget.
