National Treasury Secretary Ukur Yatani will this afternoon present the Sh.3.66 trillion budget and is expected to factor President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four legacy projects.
Yatani is expected to include the allocation of a mere sh.135 billion to the ‘Big 4’ projects in the final full year of implementation.
The Parliamentary Budget Office(PBO), in its review of the current budget said the agenda does not appear to have much prominence in the budget.
Other than an indication that it has been allocated Sh.135 billion in the next financial year, there is no further discussion or how the government will ensure that at least a certain percentage of the targets are met,” reads part of the PBO report.
PBO said the projects were faced with many challenges hence affecting its effective implementation.
“It is worth noting that budgetary allocations towards big four projects tend to be adjusted downwards during the supplementary budget. There hasn’t been any real commitment towards implementation of the big four agenda,” it stated.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had huge negative impact in the economy slowing down the implementation of different projects under the Big Four agenda.
The Big Four agenda is an economic plan that focused on universal health coverage, affordable housing, manufacturing and food security.
Under Big 4, the government targets to raise manufacturing output to 15 per cent of GDP from the current 8.5 per cent by creating one million jobs, break into top 50 ranking in the World Bank’s Eas of Doing Business global index and attract at least Kshs. 380 billion ($3.8 billion) in Foreign Direct Investments, goals that are now unlikely to be achieved by next year, due to covid disruptions.
On affordable housing, PBO reports slow delivery of the affordable housing plan which has only handed over 1370 housing units represented by Ngara’s Park Road project in Nairobi out of a target of 500,000 units by next year.
25,965 affordable housing units are currently under various stages of implementation in Starehe, Shauri Moyo, Kibera Zone, Mukuru and Meteorological site with investors already identified according to Yatani.
Through the Kenya Mortgage Refinance Company (KMRC), the government has already raised Shs.37 billion to support affordable housing programme.
On UHC, Yatani is expected to announced plans for 100 per cent Universal Healthcare Coverage as envisioned under Big 4.
The government has already rolled out the UHC insurance scheme to cover vulnerable groups.
“The UHC insurance scheme, a one single national scheme will achieve equity and efficiency through effective cross-subsidization across the poor and rich and across the sick and healthy. In addition, a UHC fund has been established to ensure seamless operations of the UHC agenda. The UHC fund regulations are being drafted,” said Treasury.
The Ministry of Health had initiated the process of finalizing the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) reforms that include among other things, pooling heath funds through taxes, compulsory insurance contributions and voluntary health schemes to help minimize the financial risk of illness across the population.
However, issues surrounding the governance and structure of the NHIF are yet to be resolved while initiatives to equip hospitals with specialized equipment such as the Managed Equipment Service (MES) have run into hurdles.
TVET’s and ICT are key enablers of the Big Four agenda.
Through TVET institutions, the government has aggressively implemented a special
technical training programme that targets to equip at least five million Kenyans with select hands-on skills.
However, ICT and education aspirations of the government’s Sh30 billion Digital Learning Programme were yet to be fully achieved.
The Jubilee administration promised to ensure that all pupil in primary schools are supplied with laptops to aid their learning.
According to the ministry’s report, 21,623 of 21,729 public primary schools have received tablets and laptops and 1,168,798 devices have been supplied.