President William Ruto’s government spent Sh1.1 trillion on office supplies, tea and snacks in just 9 months. This has been exposed by fresh data from the government itself. Data published by the National Treasury in the Quarterly Economic and Budgetary Review shows that in the nine months leading to March 2026, the government of President Ruto spent Sh1.05 trillion on Operation & Maintenance.
This was an increase by a staggering Sh400 million from the Sh700 million that was spent in the same period the previous 2024/25 fiscal year. This represented an increase of 57 percent. At the same time, this increase marked the first time in Kenya’s history that over Sh1 trillion was being spent on operations and maintenance which included samosas and tea.
The heavy expenditure by the government accounted for 32.27 percent of the Sh3.26 trillion total expenditure by the government in that period. In the previous year, this category had accounted for 25.9 percent of total government expenditure.
Noteworthy, this amount of money was not used on development or salaries or payment of any public debts. Operations and Maintenance is the category of expenditure that covers things like travel, utilities, office stationeries like printing and stationeries, tea and snacks, training and fuel.
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In the same period, the money that President Ruto’s government allocated to development was Sh262.6 billion. This means that in nine months, the amount that went to office operations was five times more than the amount that went to development.
This heavy expenditure came riding on the back of a screaming national debt. For instance, data from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) shows that in just the first 8 months of the current financial year 2025/26, President Ruto and his government had borrowed over Sh1 trillion.
At the same time, the data shows that from September 2022 when he was inaugurated as the fifth president to February 2026, Ruto and his government borrowed Sh4.1 trillion.
The data further shows that as at the end of February 2026, the total public debt stood at a staggering Sh12.844 trillion, having risen from the previous administration’s Sh8.7 trillion mark as at September 2022.
Domestic debt stood at Sh7.01 trillion while external dent was Sh5.78 trillion. This saw the total debt coming in at 69.5 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP).
Alarmingly, President Ruto’s government is now spending over two thirds of tax revenues in paying debt interest. For instance, in February 2026, tax revenues were recorded as Sh172 billion while the government spent Sh124 billion to pay debt interest. Out of this amount, Sh101 billion was used to pay domestic debt interest while Sh23 billion was used on external debt interest.
