‘Budgeted corruption’: How taxpayers lost Ksh.1B as Treasury paid State officers three times their salaries

The recent revelations by Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o on how the National Treasury over-budgeted her salary by three times, and by extension salaries of other State officers, may cost the country over Ksh.1 billion taxpayer’s money. 

The damning revelation did not come as a surprise but a confirmation of the continued trend of schemes to steal from public coffers.

Nyakang’o, who appeared before the National Dialogue Committee on Tuesday, detailed how the Treasury has been over-budgeting salaries of senior government officials through the Consolidated Fund Services. 

In the 2022/2023 financial year, for instance, Treasury originally budgeted her annual salary as Ksh.17.82 million, prompting her office to raise concerns as the figure was way above what she was taking home annually.

Treasury would only reduce that amount to Ksh.10.15 million which was still higher than her Ksh.9.18 million annual salary.

A similar trend was observed in the 2023/2024 budget where Treasury budgeted her salary at Ksh.18,357,787 an amount that is about 93% more than her actual annual salary of Ksh.9.51 million.

Treasury also budgeted for Ksh.42.4 million as salaries and allowances of the President and his deputy yet their actual gazetted salaries are Ksh.32.05 million, a difference of Ksh.10.35 million.

Nyakang’o’s revelation suggests that they are not the only casualties with the anomalies cutting across senior government officials paid through the Consolidated Fund Services (CFS), key among them the President and his deputy, the Auditor General, the IEBC Chairperson, Vice Chairperson and Commissioners, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Attorney General among other State officers whose salaries are over-budgeted only for the funds to disappear during the supplementary budget.

The discrepancies between the original budget and the actual salaries for State officers under CFS in the 2023/2024 financial year add up to over Ksh.1.5 billion, monies whose trail Nyakang’o says cannot be traced.

Nyakang’o says she only came to know of the anomaly because it affected her personally and that most of the affected senior government officials are not aware of the discrepancies.

She is calling for an immediate audit on the issue to seal the loophole of what she terms as budgeted corruption.

Nyakang’o’s revelation lifts the lid on the avoidable reasons for the country’s debt crisis as it is now emerging that with mere exaggerations on expenditure, the government may need less than what is being presented in its budget.

 The revelations come amidst declining tax revenues with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) recently admitting missing its revenue target for the first quarter of the current financial year by up to Ksh.79 billion coming against a backdrop of concerns over the high cost of living and taxation structures that seem burden the already overburdened taxpayers.

“This revelation not only pours cold water on efforts by the Kenya Kwanza government to tame corruption but raises fundamental questions on the effectiveness of parliament's oversight role in the budget approval process,” CEO of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) Kwame Owino said.