President William Ruto's first budget of Ksh3.74 trillion was increased to Ksh3.9 trillion barely four months after Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njunguna Ndungu unveiled it on June 15.
The Treasury informed the Public Debt and Privatization Committee of the changes on Friday, stating that its Principal Secretary, Chris Kiptoo, had earlier made the revelation while appearing before the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
According to PS Kiptoo, the top-up was occasioned by the increase in expenditure in the Ministry of Education, among other state departments.
In particular, most of the increased budget was allocated for the new funding model with a specific target for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students.
Other allocations were channelled to the Open University, which was launched by Ruto on August 3.
"The Ministerial expenditures have been adjusted upwards by Ksh83.76 billion in gross recurrent expenditures and reduced by Ksh41.97 billion in gross development expenditure.
"The increase in recurrent expenditures is driven towards a rise in Appropriation-in-Aid collected by Public Universities and provisions for statutory requirements like the Housing Levy," read the statement in part.
Conversely, the allocation for development projects was reduced by Ksh40.9 billion, with the most affected departments being the State Departments for Roads, Housing and Urban Development.
This follows the President's directive for his Cabinet Secretaries to reduce their ministerial budgets by 10 per cent.
Regarding Kenya's debt status, Kiptoo detailed that the country's debt portfolio increased by Ksh310 billion to Ksh10.58 trillion between July and September.
The increase was attributed to the depreciation of the Kenyan shilling against the dollar.
"Kiptoo also stated that the net external financing in the FY 2023/24 Supplementary 1, has been revised upwards by Ksh412.1 billion, due to new sources of external concessional financing from multilateral agencies and the increased cost of domestic borrowing, while the net domestic financing has been revised downwards to Ksh449.2 billion," read the statement in part.
