National Treasury CS Njuguna Ndung’u has come under fire for exceeding the Sh10 trillion debt ceiling set in June 2022 for the fiscal year 2022/2023.
Members of the National Assembly’s Public Debt and Privatisation Committee chastised Ndung’u for failing to notify the House when the government was about to breach the debt ceiling.
“Once you realized we were going there,” committee chair Shurie Abdi Omar said, “you should have come to the committee and told us about the scenarios.”
Omar claimed that the National Treasury should have informed the House that the ceiling had been breached in part due to the shilling’s depreciation.
Ndung’u told the committee on Friday that the stock of debt ceiling as of the end of June 2023 was Sh10.27 trillion.
He stated that the amount includes external debt (Sh5.44 trillion, or 52.9 percent of total), as well as domestic debt (Sh4.83 trillion, or 47.1 percent of total).
Ndung’u was also chastised for failing to notify the House that the ceiling had been breached.
“Why hasn’t the National Treasury written to the National Assembly saying they’ve broken the law?” Kinangop MP Zachary Thuku Kwenya wondered.
In June, Parliament approved the conversion of Kenya’s debt ceiling from the current Sh10 trillion to a debt anchor as a percentage of GDP.
