Kenyan foreign missions in London and New York are set to be amongst the biggest losers as the Treasury seeks to reinstate more than Sh2 billion facelift budget, amidst increased allocation for Kinshasa after an attack by rioters late January.
The Treasury has proposed to cut by more than a third the budgets for completion of purchase of a new office block in London and renovation of government-owned properties in New York, while raising the expenditure for Kinshasa and Addis Ababa by more than five times.
The budget documents show the purchase of Chancery for Kenya’s High Commission in the UK will get Sh550 million in the financial year starting July, a 38.89 percent slash compared to Sh900 million scrapped after the collapse of Finance Bill 2024.
The expenditure for renovation of properties in New York, the world’s commercial capital, has also been shaved to Sh550 million from Sh841.39 million, which was removed from the budget for the current financial year.
President William Ruto ordered the removal of cash allocation for purchase, renovation and refurbishment of offices and residences of Kenyan envoys abroad, after youth-led anti-government protests forced him to shelve a plan for new and higher taxes, leaving Sh344.3 billion budget hole.
This was part of budget cut programme which also affected purchase of furniture and vehicles (except for security agencies), while budget for renovation of buildings was halved.
The budget documents, being scrutinised by the National Assembly, shows Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi is seeking greenlight from the lawmakers, to spend nearly Sh2.35 billion on facelift of offices and homes of high commissioners, ambassadors and consulates as well as Foreign Affairs ministry.
The proposed expenditure plan includes costs for upgrade of facilitative infrastructure such as ICT and security. The allocations have, however, been trimmed by a marginal 1.83 percent from Sh2.39 billion which had been allocated for the current year ending June before being scrapped.
The allocations have been backed by reports from Office of the Auditor-General, which have repeatedly revealed the poor conditions of some of the buildings which house Kenya’s foreign missions, some of which have become “inhabitable”.
Kenya has more than 60 diplomatic missions abroad, largely serving her trade and security interests.
The document shows that the budget for renovation of government properties in Kinshasa in war-ravaged DRC, has been increased to Sh120 million from Sh20 million which had been planned last year.
The 500 percent jump in makeover budget for Kinshasa, follows the looting and vandalisation of the embassy late January after spontaneous riots erupted in the DRC capital to protest capture of Goma by M-23 militia, believed to enjoy the backing of Rwanda.
The proposed budget for renovation of government properties in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has, however, been raised by the biggest rate of 650 percent to Sh150 million from Sh20 million.
Similar budget for mission in Lusaka has been increased 466.67 percent to Sh170 million from Sh30 million, while the renovation budget for Washington has been bumped 75 percent to Sh35 million.
Others are doubling of renovation budget for chancery in Abuja to Sh10 million, 75 percent rise in budget for ongoing construction of office block in Islamabad, Pakistan, to Sh35 million and 66.67 percent growth for repairs of ambassador’s residence in the Hague to Sh25 million.
Construction and renovation for properties in Pretoria has been increased 50 percent to Sh15 million, while Mogadishu’s is up 20 percent to 30 million in the estimates being considered for approval by the lawmakers.
Besides London’s and New York’s missions, the budget for renovation of staff houses in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s commercial capital, has been slashed to Sh5.3 million from Sh20 million. The renovations in Dar es Salaam have largely stalled since 2020, a move linked to gradual relocation of envoys to Dodoma, the seat of government.
The originally planned renovation of chancery in Rome has been shelved after the removal of Sh20.50 million, while the renovation budget of properties in Kampala has been retained at Sh10 million.
The Treasury has allocated Sh100 million towards purchase of a chancery for missions at United Nations Habitat in Nairobi, a vote which was not in the scrapped budget for the current year ending June.
Other fresh renovation and repair allocation for foreign missions are Sh40 million for embassy in Tokyo, Sh35 million (Paris), Sh30 million (Berlin), Sh15 million (Stockholm), Sh10 million (Harare) and Sh5 million (Beijing).
The Parliament Budget Office (PBO) — a professional unit which advises lawmakers on fiscal and budgetary affairs — has in the past urged government to consider hiring consulates and liaison officers in countries where it does not have an embassy to cut costs associated with running missions abroad.
“Honorary Consuls offer an efficient diplomatic channel of increasing a country’s diplomatic network, as they are cost-effective than fully-fledged missions because of the lower costs attached to maintain Honorary Consuls, as they serve for free and only require to be reimbursed expenses incurred in offering their services,” PBO wrote in a report November 2021.
The National Assembly’s Departmental on Trade, Industrialisation and Cooperatives has also demanded the Trade ministry conduct a comprehensive assessment on qualification and suitability of commercial attachés which form part of the team in foreign missions. “The committee noted that the offices of trade missions are not achieving value for money spent on sustaining them abroad.
In addition, a huge share of the budgetary allocation is spent on allowances of the trade attaches,” the Trade committee of the National Assembly wrote last year.
“The offices are consuming resources without generating measurable returns such as getting new markets for Kenyan exports.”
