The Treasury’s disbursement of funds for roads and bridges surged 42.59 percent in first nine months of the current financial year, pointing to a resumption of construction projects.
Latest budget outturn report shows nearly Sh79.81 billion was wired to the State Department for Roads for development projects in the period ended March, compared with Sh55.97 billion a year earlier.
The increased funding exceeded a target of Sh68.20 billion for the review period by Sh11.60 billion, according to third quarter budgetary review report.
Treasury officials have attributed the overshoot in funding for the road projects to gradual release of funds to contractors, after validation of the bulk of debt claims by contractors.
“You may have seen that contractors are back on site. In fact, you will see the contraction of the construction sector [in 2024] now start being positive in gross domestic product. In the 2015 Economic Survey, you will see that the sector was basically dead. Now we are reviving it,” Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo said on May 14, during an interview on Nation Media Group’s Fixing the Nation show.
Fixing the Nation: Chris Kiptoo on Kenya budget 2025/26
Economic activities in the construction sector contracted 0.7 percent in 2024 compared with a growth of 3.0 percent the year before, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics wrote in the 2025 Economic Survey.
Activities in the sector have over the years thrived on increased public sector expenditure on mega infrastructure projects such as roads.
Contractors had laid down tools over government's failure to pay them billions of shillings, for both ongoing and completed works, stalling multibillion-shilling projects across the country.
Some of the contractors were owed upwards of Sh10 billion, highlighting the cash crunch that has seen some firms face the auctioneers' hammer over their inability to pay debts.
Roads development became a soft target for budget cuts under President William Ruto’s administration, which has struggled to cut funding within the recurrent budget votes such as administrative and operation costs.
The data shows development budget for roads in the nine-month review period was slashed by 33.95 percent, in Dr Ruto’s first year in office to Sh54.35 billion from Sh82.28 billion in the same period during financial year ended June 2022.
Upon taking power, Dr Ruto expressed shock at Sh900 billion in commitments for the roads sector in the budget he inherited from Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime (for the financial year ended June 2023).
“We have tried to cut it down; we have tried to cut down some of the roads that have not started. But we still remain with about Sh680 billion that we have to manage,” the Kenyan leader said on May 14, 2023.
Growing complaints over stalled road projects which has impacted access to markets, has seen the Ruto administration resume works by entering into repayment plans with contractors, following the ongoing validation by Pending Bills Verification Committee.
The pending bills team, led by former Auditor-General Edward Ouko, had by early May given the greenlight for payment of Sh229 billion. Dr Kiptoo said Sh80 billion, or 34.9 percent of the bills, was owed to road contractors.
The cuts in spending on road projects had reduced the length built in two years ended June 2024 by 68.67 percent to 1,037 kilometres, from 3,310km constructed during the last two years of Mr Kenyatta's regime, according to data from the Roads department.
