Auditor General Nancy Gathungu wants the Public Finance Management Act, 2012, amended to include sanctions for non-implementation of audit and Parliamentary recommendations, as part of measures to instil fiscal discipline.

Gathungu said her office’s audit recommendations are not always implemented and most recur in subsequent years due to lack of enforcement mechanisms and administrative sanctions.

The Auditor General said lack of sanctions has led to failure by some accounting officers to adequately account for the public resources.

“Lack of requisite sanctions has led to fiscal indiscipline, including misallocations, wastage of resources and lack of value for money in implementation of projects, theft and corruption,” she said.

Gathungu made the remarks in her presentation to the National Assembly’s Budget and Appropriations Committee, chaired by Samuel Atandi (Alego Usonga), on budget implementation status for the first quarter of the current financial year and for the last financial year.

She said the gap between projected and actual revenues collected for the national and county governments poses a challenge in the implementation of the 2024/25 budget, saying the deficits affect service delivery and result in the accumulation of pending bills.

The Auditor attributed the 56.5 per cent absorption of the development budget by county governments in the last financial year to unrealistic budget targets and delayed procurement processes.

She cited delays and shortfalls in exchequer funding, lack of alignment between budget and cash plan, budget cuts under Supplementary 1 Estimates and episodes of IFMIS system downtime as other encountered challenges during the FY 2024/25 Budget Implementation.

Gathungu recommended strengthening of fiscal discipline, realistic revenue forecasting, transparent budget execution, limitation of the public debt and enforcement of fiscal discipline.