The Appropriation Act, 2020

The Parliament of the Republic of Kenya passed the Appropriation Act, 2020 (the Act) which was assented to by the President on the 30th of June, 2020. The financial year in Kenya commences on the 1st of July and ends on the 30th of June and as such the Act will cover the period from the 1st of July, 2020 to the 30th of June, 2021. As article 221 (6) of the Constitution provides, the purpose of the Act is to authorise the withdrawal from the Consolidated Fund of the money needed for the national government expenditure, and the expenditure for the Judiciary and Parliament, which expenditure is more properly detailed in the Schedule to the Act (the Schedule).

The amount authorised for the financial year ending on the 30th of June, 2021 is Kes.1,456,147,560,961. In addition to the Kes.1,456,147,560,961, there may be applied, for the several services and purposes specified in the Schedule, the sums specified out of any money directed to be applied as appropriations in aid under article 206(1)(b) of the Constitution. Article 206 (1)(b) of the Constitution provides for the monies that may be retained by a State Organ and this financial year may be particularly interesting because in Council of Governors v Attorney General & 7 others [2019] eKLR, the Supreme Court of Kenya decided that only bodies created by the Constitution can be referred to as “State Organs”. As a result of this ruling it would be interesting to see how bodies that cannot now be referred to as “State Organs” would deal with laws which seemed to suggest to those bodies that they could retain money collected by them for their expenditure.

In another decision from the Court of Appeal, i.e. in Okiya Omtata and another vs the Attorney-General and others consolidated with the Law Society of Kenya vs the Attorney-General and others, the Court of Appeal found that the procurement of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project was not exempt from the provisions of the procurement law then in force. This finding means that that any expenditure that is not strictly in accordance with procurement law would be illegal and it will be interesting to see how closely the procurement plans of the national government, Judiciary and Parliament are aligned to the approved budgets and the Act.

The figures appropriated are given in the Schedule to the Act which can be found here http://www.okadvocates.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/AppropriationAct_2020.pdf.