Government spending on day-to-day operations such as office supplies, fuel, travel and utilities has surged by more than 50 percent to cross the Sh1 trillion mark, a year after President William Ruto’s administration imposed austerity measures in response to the Gen Z-led anti-tax protests.
Fresh Treasury data shows recurrent expenditure on operations and maintenance (O&M), which excludes salaries and wages, hit Sh1.05 trillion in the nine months to March 2026, compared to Sh699.30 billion spent in the same period of the previous financial year.
The costs accounted for nearly a third (32.27 percent) of Sh3.26 trillion total government expenditure in the review period compared with a quarter (25.9 percent) in the prior year.
The spending exceeded the Treasury’s target of Sh784.17 billion by Sh267.90 billion, representing a deviation of 34.16 percent and underscoring the rapid rebound in government consumption expenditure after last financial year’s cuts.
The jump marks the first time operational expenditure has crossed the trillion-shilling threshold within nine months, highlighting the rising cost of running government despite repeated pledges to rein in spending.
Operations and maintenance expenditure covers the day-to-day running of government, including fuel, utilities, travel, office administration, hospitality, training, maintenance, consumables and other routine operational costs incurred by ministries, departments and agencies.
The latest surge came just a year after recurrent O&M expenditure had fallen for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, dropping by 11.8 percent in the period that ended March 2025 as the government implemented emergency spending cuts following the collapse of the Finance Bill 2024.
The withdrawn Bill had sought to raise Sh344.3 billion in new taxes but was abandoned after widespread Gen Z-led protests against higher taxation and the rising cost of living.
The demonstrations triggered one of the biggest fiscal crises facing President Ruto’s administration, forcing the government to slash spending after losing a key source of additional revenue for the 2024/25 budget.
At the time, Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo acknowledged that the State had been pushed into an unfamiliar austerity regime, after ministries and agencies failed to receive the allocations they had sought.
“What we ended up with was more like a 50-50 [situation] where we had to take more debt and reduce expenditure by almost Sh170 billion. This is a space where most government institutions had never been because… they did not get what they wanted,” Dr Kiptoo said last year while explaining the budget cuts that largely targeted operations expenditure.
The austerity measures announced at the height of the anti-government protests included the removal of budgets for refurbishment and partitioning of government offices, suspension of the purchase of new vehicles except for security agencies, and a 50 percent cut in expenditure on renovations, travel and hospitality.
The government also halted the acquisition of new vehicles — some of which can cost more than Sh30 million each — for the first six months of the financial year, ordered ministries to halve the number of advisers and directed enforcement of mandatory retirement for public servants upon attainment of the age of 60 years.
President Ruto further scrapped budgets for the offices of the First Lady and Second Lady and removed confidential allocations for State House and other public offices as part of efforts to contain expenditure following the collapse of the tax plan.
The protest-driven austerity measures came on top of earlier directives targeting non-essential spending such as printing, advertising, communication supplies, training, hospitality, furniture purchases, refurbishment works, research studies and feasibility assessments.
The cuts had temporarily slowed the growth of recurrent expenditure, offering brief relief to taxpayers who had complained about rising taxes amid stagnant earnings and a high cost of living.
However, the latest Treasury figures now suggest the restraint may have been short-lived as operational expenditure has accelerated sharply in the current financial year.
The Sh1.052 trillion spent by March this year is higher than the full-year operational expenditure recorded three years ago at Sh927.09 billion for the period ended June 2023. It is also close, or about 94 percent of Sh1.12 trillion operational spending for the entire last fiscal year ended June 2025, highlighting the speed at which the cost of government is rising.
Treasury data shows recurrent O&M expenditure for the review period stood at Sh457.67 billion in 2019/20 before falling to Sh439.83 billion in 2020/21 (Covid period) and then rising to Sh566.54 billion in 2021/22.
The spending climbed to Sh654.06 billion in 2022/23 and Sh793.07 billion in 2023/24 before falling to Sh699.30 billion in the period ended March 2025 amid the austerity drive.
The latest increase means recurrent operational spending has more than doubled in six years, growing by about 130 percent since 2019/20.
The rebound is likely to reignite concerns about Kenya’s fiscal discipline at a time when the country faces mounting debt-servicing obligations, rising interest costs and pressure from lenders such as the International Monetary Fund to narrow budget deficits.
Critics have repeatedly argued that recurrent expenditure is consuming an increasingly larger share of tax revenues, leaving less room for development projects and productive investments that could stimulate economic growth.
The spending surge is also expected to raise fresh questions over whether the government has managed to sustain expenditure reforms announced during the height of the deadly youth-led protests.
While the Treasury has previously defended higher recurrent expenditure as necessary to maintain delivery of public services and security operations, the latest figures could complicate the government’s attempts to convince investors and lenders that it remains committed to fiscal consolidation.
With three months remaining before the end of the financial year in June, the latest data points to the possibility of a record annual operations bill, potentially deepening scrutiny over the cost of running government in a period of high taxation and economic strain.
