Ratio Blog: Public Finances Go Charitable. And Missing

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

IDP funding, youth labour funding, constituency development funding – noble purposes perhaps, but inevitably cash cows for the well connected. Andrea’s weekly column for the (Nairobi) Star. Years ago, when Professor Anyang’ Nyong’o was still the Minister for Planning and Development, I worked my way through his annual Public Expenditure Review. Not something that you’d pick up just for the thrill of it, and I thought I’d just have a quick glance. But I actually got quite engrossed in the document as I worked my way through the pages. Acknowledging government’s tight financial conditions, Anyang’ Nyong’o analysed whether it had put its limited financial means to the best use. For example, in combing through government’s spending, he pointed out where e.g. the same tasks were covered by more than one ministry or parastatal, which, he argued, translated into unnecessary and therefore wasteful spending. But isn’t this such common sense that it’s barely worth mentioning, you’d argue? Your mum does this kind of housekeeping all the time, right? That’s precisely my point. I simply hadn’t expected a member of cabinet to be that pragmatic, straightforward and, yes, common-sensical about the executive’s spending. It seems a little odd to be surprised by this. Today, the good professor is, of course, head of a ministry that really shouldn’t be there in the first place – there is little sense to the division in ministries between public health and medical services. In his previous incarnation, Anyang’ Nyong’o would have been the first to point this out, as much as he would have criticised the inflationary surge in the number of ministries as an unaffordably extravagant and plain wasteful. Spending that wastefully is borderline criminal when there are so many urgent requirements – not of the Mercedes-versus-Passat kind, but things as crucial as cholera medication and food to keep people alive. However, since the vast majority of MPs pursue a political career as a straightforward business proposition, we have become almost inured to the regular waste in the public administration. In the last budget, Uhuru Kenyatta had actually made a faint attempt to address this issue, albeit on a small scale and not by reducing the number of ministries. Aside from the Passat Edict – that triggered the undignified ‘mine can’t be smaller than yours, and it most definitely can’t be small’ discourse – he also proposed cuts and caps across a number of areas in the public administration to reduce spending on travel, phone calls and so on. The Passat drama was quickly mired in the usual fog of due process versus accusations of a quick (and sizeable) buck made on the side, so nobody has gotten round to follow up on his other suggestions. But there is really not much pressure to look at such minor items as government phone bills or even duplications in ministries anytime soon. Not as long as there are ever new special-purpose allocations that can be plundered even more conveniently. And the nobler the purpose, the bigger the allocation: Maize for starving Kenyans – has it ever been conclusively been clarified where that maize went? Work for youth funding: In principle, a very useful idea if you consider the pressure that unemployment, aspirations and pent up energy create among Kenya’s large young population. The money for the Kazi kwa Vijana surely went somewhere, but apparently not towards actually paying those youth who had done work. The latest, and probably saddest, case is a report by the Kenya’s human rights organisations that that government officials had misappropriated a good part of the funding officially allocated to help victims of the post-election violence to relocate. But as long as it’s for a noble purpose, doubts over whether our politicians should be handling any money just get swatted away. There are plenty of evaluations showing how the Constituency Development Funds (CDF), apart from undermining the separation of power, regularly get drained by MPs and their cronies. But, the overall soothing chant remains, it’s for the people. It’s all good. In Copenhagen, African leaders have been quick to back the muscular rhetoric of Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi who had asked for massive funding commitments to compensate African countries for the damage from climate change, or else. If that is justified is not my point here. Just imagine, for a second, that the industrialised countries said yes, and were getting ready to write that cheque. Do you have any confidence that this money would actually end up in environmental restoration, conservation, and perhaps green energy? Would you hand this money over to politicians who already have vast tracts of land in the Mau Forest and treat you to such enlightened discourse that rain doesn’t come from trees, but from the sky? Fat chance, if the funds allocated for the victims of the post-election violence – or any of the other noble initiatives   are anything to go by. Reprinted with kind permission from the (Nairobi) Star Share this article with others: