WASHINGTON – According to a BBC story, only 26% of money spent and collected by the Kenyan government has been fully approved in an audit for 2013-2014. Kenya’s auditor-general, whose report covered an annual budget of about $16 billion said there were “disturbing problems” in government’s accounting.
Spending with no justification
The recently released report indicated that there are “still persistent and disturbing problems in collection and accounting for revenue”. According to the auditor-general, about 16% of all government accounts data is “misleading”, a polite way to say that several government agencies release to the public a great deal of false information aimed at hiding graft, embezzlement and worse.
False payrolls
The BBC indicates that “Among the numerous items being questioned [by the report] are empty office spaces paid by the police and 32 faulty armored vehicles for the military. The health department’s accounts were particularly worrying as they failed to account for 22 billion Kenyan shillings ($216 million) worth of spending, the report said. The auditor-general also noted that $2 billion had been transferred to an offshore account, against regulations”….”When the authorities started biometrically registering all civil servants in 2014 they found more than 12,000 false names in the government’s payroll.”
Only 1.2% of total spending properly documented
A WSJ story on the same topic notes that, according to same auditor-general’s report, only 1.2% of all Kenyan government spending is properly accounted for. About half is murky, while a quarter lacks any documentation.
There you go. 25% of the entire state spending cannot be justified.
Notwithstanding all this, Kenya is held up by the IMF and other multilateral institutions as one of Africa’s important success stories. An example to be followed by others. Many point out its IT companies and its successful M-Pesa mobile phone based payment system, used by millions.
Too much corruption
And yet Kenya is ranked among the world’s most corrupt countries. It came 145 out of 174 nations on the Transparency International’s Global Corruption Perception Index.
President Uhuru Kenyatta tried to get rid of or punish corrupt officials. In March 2015 four cabinet ministers and other high-ranking officials have been suspended.
Obviously this is not enough.