State Residences and the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) have emerged among government entities that overspent their allocations within six months before the end of the financial year.
Presenting the 2025/2026 Mid-Year Budget Statement yesterday, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Decentralisation Joseph Mwanamvekha said the State Residences, for example, spent all the K67 billion allocated in the 2025/2026 financial year.
He added that the residences also spent an extra K1.5 billion bringing total expenditure to about K69 billion in six months.
Mwanamvekha said the OPC also spent 100 percent of its allocation in six months while the Office of the Vice-President spent 94 percent of its allocation in the current fiscal year.
The State Residences have since been allocated K22 billion, bringing the total to K89 billion in the 2025/2026 fiscal year.
“Elections overspent by K50.0 billion, representing a 30.7 percent overrun from the approved figure of K162.9 billion to K212.9 billion by end September 2025. On the other hand, generic goods and services registered expenditure of K489.7 billion, representing 71 percent utilisation of the approved budget.
Under this budget line, the votes that largely contributed to the overrun are as follows: State Residences (over 100 percent); Office of the President and Cabinet (100 percent); Office of the Vice President (94 percent); Ministry of Lands (94 percent); and National Registration Bureau (81 percent),” said Mwanamvekha.
Mwanamvekha said overruns were recorded across nearly all budget categories, including wages and salaries, pensions and gratuities, interest payments and use of goods and services.
“The midyear outturn for recurrent expenditure amounted to K3.502 trillion, compared to the midyear projection of K3.220 trillion, representing an overrun of K281.8 billion, which is 8.8 percent. Wages and salaries overspent by K125.9 billion, representing a 19 percent overrun of the midyear target of K661.5 billion. This is on account of massive recruitments in the security institutions and the education and health sectors,” added Mwanamvekha.
Meanwhile, Budget and Finance Committee Chairperson Sosten Gwengwe said the overspending shows that there is a lot of fiscal indiscipline in ministries, departments and government agencies.
Gwengwe, a former minister of Finance said there is need for the government to enforce fiscal discipline and reduce overspending.
“We expect the controlling officers in the MDAs to treat this as law, to make sure that they don’t commit beyond what has been allocated to them by law in Parliament because it’s bad enough to have a budget which is not balancing as it is, but it’s worse when you go beyond what we have now because the maximum should be the kind of budget we have,” said Gwengwe.
Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition Simplex Chithyola Banda is expected to make a formal response to the budget on Monday afternoon when lawmakers reconvene.
