Wednesday, December 28, 2011

MPs to call the shots during making of Budget



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By ALPHONCE SHIUNDU ashiundu@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted  Tuesday, December 27  2011 at  18:48
Members of Parliament will in 2013 have sweeping powers to prepare the national Budget.
A look at the draft of new Standing Orders has revealed new timelines for the budgeting and granted the powers to alter ministerial allocations to House committees.
The Cabinet Secretary will have a standing appointment with Parliament on or before February 15 every year to table a Budget Policy Statement—a three-year economic forecast, with details on the current state of the economic, the macro-economic and fiscal policies, plus revenue targets, and the debt portfolio from both external sources and the domestic market.
But before the statement is tabled, individual ministries, government departments and other independent offices will have submitted their “budgetary requests” to specific House committees “for review”.
“The committees will ensure that in discussing these budgetary requests, the deliberations will include a discussion of national budget priorities, including alternative ways of allocating new budget programmes as well as increasing or reducing funding where necessary taking into account how such alternative allocations will meet major national needs and affect balanced growth and development of Republic of Kenya,” reads a section of the draft seen by the Nation.
Hiring of experts
Perhaps noting the deficiency in economic and financial acuity for the MPs, the new rules have opened doors for the hiring of experts to help MPs crunch the numbers in the Budget.
The deadline for the scrutiny of the Budget Policy Statement by the House Budget and Appropriations Committee has also been shifted from April 15 (as is the case now) to March 7 of every year.
The report of the Budget and Appropriations Committee “shall contain a schedule of resources recommended for allocation for individual programmes”.
The whole House will have one week to go through the work of the committee and adopt the budget by March 15.
Once this is done, the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Finance shall go back, work on the annual estimates of the National Government bearing in mind the resolution of the House.
The Judiciary and Parliament will also align their budgets to the House resolutions.
All departments and arms of government will then submit their annual Budgets to Parliament “not later than April 30”.
Once this is done, the budgets will then go back to the departmental committees which will go through the fresh allocations to audit if they are in line with the House resolutions.
The committees will have 21 days to audit the work of the Executive.
The new rules give the committees to alter the allocations only that the tinkering should not affect the total amount of the national Budget.

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