Budgetary Control Practices and Financial Expenditure in Public Technical and Vocational Education Training Institutions in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Good financial management is fundamental to the success of both public and private institutions globally. Many companies make use of budgets mainly as an internal control tool for efficient and effective resource allocation. Budgets help organizations compare between the actual and intended performance for effective inference and evaluations. Ideal budgets are a base for performance management and standard setting. A detailed review of past studies shows that they either were carried out on a different context or interrogated different conceptual issues. In addition, some of the past empirical studies focused on different research methodologies and adopted different data collection instruments. Ineffective management and administrative mechanisms, lack of appropriate budgetary control systems has contributed to imprudent budgetary resource utilization, in public training institutes. The purpose of this study was to establish the influence of budgetary control practices on financial expenditure in public technical and vocational education training institutions in Nairobi County, Kenya. The study was anchored on the Agency Theory/Public Sector Budgeting Theory. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey as it seeks to describe data and characteristics about the population or phenomenon being studied. The study targeted 21 TVET institutions, principals, BOM, HODS, Finance Officers, Accountant / Bursars and Procurement Officers. The study results indicated that budgetary plans has a positive and significant effect on financial expenditure (P = 0.031). In addition, the study found that procurement plans was found to have positive and significant effect on financial expenditure (P= 0.039). Further, cash management had a positive and significant effect on financial expenditure (P = 0.038). In addition, the study found that audit control was also found to have positive and significant effect on financial expenditure (P=043) followed by procurement plans, audit control and cash management. The study recommends that the principals of the TVETs should review their current performance yearly targets, work on financial threats and opportunities and analyses the success and failure of previous budgetary plans to improve on their budgetary planning. Further, the principals in TVETs should employ more budget officers and provide budget manual in order to improve on their budgetary control. In addition, they should solicit feedback, review budget conference for accuracy and arrange for catering and other vendors to improve on the budget confere