The cost of running public offices under the national government surged 31 percent in the first quarter of the current 2025/26 financial year, exposing the government’s struggles to honour its austerity pledges.
Fresh disclosures by the National Treasury show that State ministries, departments, and agencies spent Sh366.5 billion in the quarter to September 2025 on recurrent votes such as on salaries and wages, administration, operation and maintenance of offices, compared to Sh280.09 billion in a similar period a year earlier.
This means that recurrent spending by the public offices under the national government increased by Sh86.41 billion or 30.9 percent over the three months, even though the President William Ruto-led regime insists that it is tightening fiscal discipline to plug a widening budget deficit.
The increase came just a year after President Ruto had pledged to improve efficiency in public expenditure following deadly protests that forced the government to drop a plan for new and higher taxes in June 2024.
The austerities were largely supposed to target non-essential expenditure such as printing, advertising, travel, hospitality, refurbishment, furniture, training, research, as well as communication supplies and services, among others.
During the quarter under review, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) remained the largest consumer of recurrent resources, drawing Sh88.5 billion, an increase of 8.1 percent from Sh81.88 billion spent in a corresponding period last year.
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Recurrent allocations for the National Police Service climbed 12.5 percent to Sh30.6 billion, while those for the State Department for Defence rose by 17.9 percent to Sh42.8 billion, driven by higher and logistical costs linked to regional deployments.
The spending spike comes against a backdrop of slowed revenue growth, with tax receipts underperforming against targets in the first quarter, to stand at Sh553.7 billion, well below the annual goal of Sh2.6 trillion, amid subdued imports and weak corporate earnings.
In budget documents tabled in Parliament earlier in May this year, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi indicated that he would be proposing to trim the recurrent budget to Sh1.72 trillion from the Sh1.73 trillion spent in the fiscal year ending June 2025.
Parliament, however, approved a Sh1.47 trillion spending plan for recurrent expenses for the current financial year.
The mismatch between revenue and expenditure could further stretch borrowing needs, complicating the Treasury’s plan to stabilise the deficit at about 4.7 percent of GDP this fiscal year.
This also suggests that Dr Ruto, who pledged to rein in rising recurrent costs and expenses when he took power in September 2022, has struggled to control spending, despite making a relatively good start in his first year in office.