Challenges of budget implementation by the Kenya commission for higher education

Abstract

A budget whether it is for a public institution or for a private profit oriented company, is a basic and powerful tool in management and serves as a tool for planning and controlling the use of scarce financial resources in the accomplishment of organizational goals. Despite this importance of budgeting, the implementation there-of and its suggested links to organizational structure, there has been little empirical exploration of how public sector budget implementation has developed within increasingly decentralized frameworks of governance. Most of the studies on budgeting mainly focus on the publicly listed firms sector and less on the non-listed sector. The study sought to determine the challenges of budget implementation at the Commission for Higher Education in Kenya. This study was a descriptive in nature done on a population consisting of 82 members of staff at the Secretariat of the Commission for Higher Education. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to the sample drawn and descriptive analysis were employed. Pie charts, tables, graphs were then used as appropriate to present the data The study found that the Commission faces several budget implementation challenges such as managers feeling insecure when following proscribed/restricted procedures, corruption, lack of co-ordination, changing environmental needs, poor corporate governance structures, insufficient implementation capacities, delays in mobilizing external financing, overoptimistic implementation schedules and environmental hazards like sudden change in regulations. The study hence recommends that the Commission should overcome the challenges by studying the inflation trends since an increase in the same leads to increase in cost and unexpected difficulties, conduct sufficient initial study so as to overcome the wide variance by conducting a monthly or quarterly review of financial implementation of the budget and the Commission to further identify budget overruns so that adequate countermeasures can be prepared