The National Treasury targets clean-up of data on debt tapped from the domestic market amid mounting pressure for transparency in the government’s financial transactions.

National Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo said that recruitment is underway for a Registrar of national government securities to help improve transparency in the management of the country’s haul of domestic debt, which hit Sh7.4 trillion as at July 24, 2026, accounting for 82.3 percent of the total borrowing.

“The National Treasury is in the process of operationalising the position of Registrar of national government securities. The position of the Registrar of national government securities has been created, and the Public Service Commission has conducted interviews for the position,” he told members of the Public Petitions Committee of the National Assembly.

National government securities constitute Treasury Bills, which refer to short-term instruments, and Treasury Bonds, which constitute long-term instruments through which the Exchequer borrows from the public to finance gaps in the annual budget.

As at the close of July 2026, Treasury Bills and Treasury Bonds constituted Sh1.14 trillion and Sh6.09 trillion, respectively.

Dr Kiptoo’s submission was necessitated by a petition filed by Beatrice Waiyaki and others, representing Kiambu County Empowerment Network and the Bunge Mashinani Initiative regarding the governance of public debt in the country.

The petitioners also poked holes in the government’s aggregation of national debt data, terming it complex and inaccessible to ordinary Kenyans seeking to understand how the Exchequer is structuring debt, whose financing is met using taxpayer funds.

The Treasury PS told the National Assembly that plans are underway to overhaul the country’s debt reporting framework by adopting a more centralised platform for all debt data in the country.

A team dubbed the Public Debt Warehouse Implementation Committee is spearheading this overhaul.

“A comprehensive and mandatory public debt register already exists. However, the National Treasury is implementing a Debt Data Warehouse to consolidate debt information from multiple systems and sources into a secure and centralized platform. This will reduce manual processes, eliminate duplication, minimise errors and enhance the speed, accuracy and reliability of debt reporting”, Kiptoo said.

The latest changes in the country’s debt management and reporting frameworks come as pressure rises for the government to adhere to the prescribed debt ceiling of 55 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the October 2023 amendment of the Public Finance Management Act.

Currently, Kenya’s debt-to-GDP ratio is at 69.4 percent of GDP, which places it significantly above the legally prescribed ceiling, with the government having been given five years within the adoption of the amendment to align the country’s debt with the 55 percent of GDP ceiling.

“The National Treasury is actively implementing a multi-year fiscal consolidation programme to reduce the fiscal deficit in the medium-term and shift domestic borrowing toward longer tenor to reduce refinancing risk”, Kiptoo said.

The government’s debt stock surged to Sh12.82 trillion in June 2026 on a new wave of borrowing amid depressed revenue collection, new disclosures by the National Treasury said.

The government document laid in the National Assembly on July 29, 2026, shows that a cumulative Sh416.2 billion was procured from multilateral and commercial creditors during the period January 1, 2026 and April 30, 2026 to finance various projects in the country.

In the current financial year, the government plans to borrow Sh987.4 billion from the domestic market to finance the Sh4.82 trillion budget. This marks an increase from the Sh961.7 billion borrowed from the domestic market in the financial year that ended June 30, 2026.

jamboko@ke.nationmedia.com