The Controller of Budget (COB), Margaret Nyakang’o, has flagged expenditures of Sh5.66 billion on salary payments outside approved payroll systems in the first nine months of the Kenya Kwanza government.
The findings of a review of salary expenditures by ministries, departments and agencies in nine months to March 2023 raise questions about the commitment by the government to instil transparency in its wage bill expenditures.
“A review of recurrent expenditure shows that Sh399.96 billion was spent on compensation to employees, representing 40.3 percent of the gross recurrent expenditures by MDAs,” Nyakang’o said.
“Further analysis revealed that Sh363.66 billion was processed through the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database and other approved payroll management systems. Sh5.66 billion was paid outside the prescribed payroll management system.”
The wage bill for the national government in the third quarter of the 2022-2023 fiscal year to March burst the budget by nearly Sh16.55 billion, signalling that the expenditure pressure that came about from new appointments by President William Ruto’s administration.
“In the annual national government budget implementation review report, we will annex MDAs with payments outside the prescribed payroll system and reasons thereof,” the CoB said.
MDAs are required to process salaries via approved payroll systems, including the integrated personnel payroll database (IPPD) which was designed in the 1996/97 fiscal year.
The system was introduced to address the challenges of manual payroll administration which had been described as cumbersome, causing salary delays, inaccuracy in determining staffing levels and poor accountability of funds. The system’s main objective is to maintain accurate and consistent personnel data in public service.
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