We knew the Treasury was planning to accelerate the pace of the budget process this year to wrap things up before we all began suffering from election fever.

But the pace of document release is truly dizzying, leaving the public with little time to interrogate what is being proposed. I presume parliament is also struggling to stay on top of things.

As we have been finalising our review of the Budget Review and Outlook Paper, which was made available in November, the draft Budget Policy Statement has been released and now the Division of Revenue Bill has also been mooted. I will try in this column to grapple with just a few of the many issues that have emerged from these documents.

One general observation is that there continues to be a lack of seriousness in the way that budget documents are produced and the proposals that they contain are rationalised.

What can it mean when the Budget Review and Outlook Paper predicts a decline in current year revenue of Ksh44 billion, and a month later the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) predicts an increase of Ksh18 billion? No doubt Treasury does have slightly more information by the time of the BPS, but a difference of over Ksh60 billion in projected revenue requires some justification. There is none in the BPS.

On the expenditure side, the differences between these two documents are not that significant, but the differences with the original budget are noteworthy. There has been a decline in predicted spending in 2016/17 from the budget to the BPS of over Ksh200 billion, all of it on the development side.

Though it is not explained, this is almost certainly related to the over-estimation of foreign financed development in the original budget. Treasury actually acknowledged this at the time, even as it tabled a budget with twice as much donor-funded development spending as it intended to realise.

It may be prudent for parliament to examine this issue carefully in considering how realistic the 2017/18 budget figures will be.

Looking at historical trends, the BROP seems to be projecting unrealistic revenue once again for 2017/18: Using a realistic estimate of 2016/17 actual revenue, Treasury is projecting growth in 2017/18 of 18 per cent, which is well above average for recent years.

If revenue actually grows at the historical rate in 2017/18 and Treasury meets its expenditure targets, these unrealistic revenue targets will lead to a deficit that is Ksh46 billion more than projected.

It is impossible to do justice to the issue of funding for counties here, but suffice it to say that Treasury has proposed a radical approach to the division of revenue.

They argue that the county share of revenue should rise by the rate of inflation, which they take to be about 7 per cent based on average inflation over the past few years.

Because revenue grows faster than inflation on average, this approach is severely biased in favour of the national government.

CRA proposes using average revenue growth in recent years, which is 15 per cent. It is obvious that, on average, Treasury’s approach would automatically give the difference of 8 per cent between these two figures to the national government, a position that is not consistent with the constitutional spirit of equitable sharing of revenue between national and county governments.

Finally, on the question of sector priorities, the BROP and BPS are not fully aligned, which is again surprising for the same reason given above: The very short period of time between the release of the two documents.

Both documents expect a decline in the share of the budget going to the energy and infrastructure sector, the BROP by roughly 2 percentage points, and the BPS by nearly 5 percentage points. As usual, this sector is flagged as a priority and no explanation is given for these declines.

Education is a major beneficiary, with an increase of 1 percentage point in the BROP and 3 percentage points in the BPS relative to the current budget. Public administration is on the rise, gaining 0.9 percentage points in the BROP and 2.1 percentage points in the BPS. Public administration is not mentioned as a priority area.

Health is puzzling: The BROP saw it increase its share of the total budget by 0.1 percentage points, but the BPS has its share declining by 0.3 percentage points. Again, this is allegedly a “priority” area. The environment sector also had a minor increase in the BROP but is now falling by 1 percentage point in the BPS.

As is generally the case, there is no reasonable explanation in these documents for the proposed shifts in sector allocations. This leaves parliament (and the public) with plenty of questions to ask.

Jason Lakin is Kenya country director for the International Budget Partnership. E-mail: [email protected]