The State House spent a staggering KSh 4.5 billion in the first three months of the 2025/2026 financial year, a new report from the Controller of Budget (CoB), Margaret Nyakang'o, has revealed. This expenditure, which averages to KSh 50 million per day, starkly contrasts with the government's repeated pledges to cut costs and enforce fiscal discipline.

The disclosure lands at a sensitive time, as many Kenyan households face immense economic pressure and question the government's spending priorities. The lavish expenditure from July to September 2025 represents more than half of the State House's total KSh 8.58 billion allocation for the entire year, a figure that has already been revised upwards multiple times.

Spending Under Scrutiny

According to the CoB's National Government Budget Implementation Review Report, the spending by the President's office represents a significant over-expenditure. State House spent KSh 4.32 billion on recurrent expenditure against a quarterly target of KSh 1.92 billion, exceeding its budget by 125%. This pattern of overspending was also noted in the offices of the Deputy President and the Prime Cabinet Secretary, which collectively breached their budgets by Sh4.32 billion.

This spending spree comes just over a year after President William Ruto announced a raft of austerity measures in mid-2024 aimed at taming the country's wage bill and excessive borrowing. Those measures included pledges to:

• Reduce government travel budgets by 50%.
• Cut budgets for renovations by 50% and remove confidential budgets in executive offices.
• Dissolve or merge state corporations with overlapping functions.
• Suspend the hiring of Chief Administrative Secretaries (CAS) and reduce government advisors by half.

A Question of Priorities

The high expenditure on recurrent items like hospitality (KSh 697.5 million) and travel raises serious questions about the administration's commitment to its own cost-cutting directives. While the government has defended some expenditures as necessary for the President to execute his constitutional mandate, the scale of the spending has drawn criticism. Many Kenyans feel that while they are being asked to make sacrifices, the cost of governance remains excessively high.

The report's findings are amplified by a wider context of questionable spending at both national and county levels. The same CoB report revealed that 20 county governments spent nothing on development projects during the same three-month period, instead directing billions towards recurrent expenses like salaries and travel.

As the details of the State House budget become public, the government faces renewed pressure to align its spending with the economic realities facing its citizens. The figures present a difficult challenge for an administration that has repeatedly advocated for Kenyans to live within their means.