2017 national budget plan introduced

  By CHARLES MOI
The Department of National Planning has introduced the next year’s national budget framework paper to strengthen the budget.
The department’s economic and budgetary adviser  Laurin Janes said the paper was a new tool that would be used to link national development priorities to the budget.
Janes said it was the main aspect of the National Planning Act.
“It’s one of the first steps in which the department implements and brings the planning act to life,” Janes said.
“The national budget framework paper, the main function is to define sector allocation and think about what expenditures should be taken in each sector to effectively address the policy priorities that we’ve outlined in all of the medium term development plans.”
“We recommended that there should be an increased focus in the economic sector to produce much-needed export revenue and economic diversification to support the health and education sectors.”
Janes explained the process of the paper was still in its draft stage.
“We’re still taking this to NEC (national executive council) and that it will be endorsed and published probably in the next few weeks,” Janes said.
“The purpose of the national budget framework paper (defined in the Planning Act) is to link the annual budget to the medium term development plans.
“It is also to provide guidance in the formulation of the budget strategy paper.”
Janes said the first step of paper was to give percentage to each sector of the budget.
“We give percentage allocations to each centre and were doing that based on historical trends on shifting policy priorities that expressed in MTDP2 (medium term development plan 2).”