HOW POOR PLANNING OF STATE PROJECTS COSTS KENYAN TAXPAYERS BILLIONS

NAIROBI- Anyone who has attempted to put up a building is familiar with the ‘ black hole’ that gobbles up huge cash past the initial estimates or even foreseeable contingency.

Even for the most frugal, armed with the bill of quantities, accounting for every nail and supervising the construction, there is always a feeling that the contractor has given you a raw deal, having colluded with the hardware store or carted away a bag of cement.

However, for a government actively seeking to make a killing, collusion, overestimation and variation are done so brazenly that taxpayers have to foot an additional cost that runs up to half of the public investment.

This has cost the country billions of shillings in lost or delayed investment decisions. The Director-General for Budget, Fiscal and Economic Affairs Geoffrey Mwau said recently that part of the option that Treasury was looking at in terms of mobilising resources was to improve project administration

“Infrastructure governance is one of the areas we are looking at. According to the presentations for some countries, poor management of public investment leads to a lot of expenses sometimes up to 39 per cent,” Mr Mwau told the seventh African Fiscal Forum in Nairobi recently.

“There is a need to improve management efforts, proper project appraisal, ensuring they are completed in time,” he said.

- STANDARD DIGITAL

A section of the Thiba mega dam whose construction works are at 20 per cent, according to the Project Manager Stephen Mutinda. Delays have seen major projects cost nearly 40 per cent more.