Auditor General Nancy Gathungu has renewed calls for stricter penalties against accounting officers who ignore audit recommendations, warning that weak enforcement continues to fuel fiscal indiscipline across government institutions.
Speaking before the National Assembly Budget and Appropriations Committee, chaired by Alego Usonga MP Samuel Atandi, Gathungu said many of her office’s recommendations are routinely disregarded, allowing irregular spending, misallocations and wastage to recur year after year.
She urged Parliament to amend the Public Finance Management Act to introduce explicit sanctions for officers who fail to act on audit findings or Parliamentary directives.
“Lack of requisite sanctions has led to fiscal indiscipline, including misallocations, wastage of resources, stalled projects, theft and corruption,” she told MPs, noting that several institutions continue to struggle with poor planning and weak financial controls.
Gathungu also highlighted widening gaps between projected and actual revenue at both national and county levels, warning that budget deficits are hurting service delivery and contributing to the piling of pending bills.
Counties, she said, only achieved 56.5 per cent absorption of their development budgets in the last financial year due to unrealistic targets, delayed procurement and interruptions in IFMIS operations. Additional obstacles included cash-flow mismatches, supplementary budget cuts and shortfalls in exchequer releases.
The Auditor General recommended stricter oversight mechanisms, realistic revenue forecasting, and consistent enforcement of audit and Parliamentary recommendations. She further raised concern that Parliament’s delays in debating audit reports deny Kenyans the benefits of timely corrective action.
“This implies the public is denied the gains that could accrue from implementing audit recommendations. There is no value for money from the resources applied in undertaking the audits,” she said.
Gathungu also criticized instances where parliamentary committees reopen settled audit matters, effectively acting as auditors an approach she warned could enable unscrupulous officers to evade accountability through negotiations for favourable outcomes.
Her office continues to play a central role in exposing losses stemming from mismanagement. A recent special audit covering April 2021 to June 2022 found the government lost Ksh34 billion in 15 months through irregular payments linked to the 2022 General Election and the petroleum price stabilisation programme.
Gathungu told MPs that without firm consequences for non-compliance, these patterns will persist, undermining public confidence in the management of Kenya’s resources.
