(a) What is public recurrent expenditure? [5 marks]
(b) Give five reasons for the rapid increase in government expenditure in your country. [15 marks]
Explanation
(a) A public recurrent expenditure is government spending on items that recur or repeat themselves on yearly basis, e.g. salaries, wages, expenditures on repairs
and maintenance, etc.
(b) The reasons for the rapid increase in government expenditure are:
(i) increase in employment and high salary and wage bills have increased government expenditure.
(ii) increase in price of commodities.
(iii) increase in population has led to greater demand for social services
(iv) huge resources are committed to the settlement of increasing internal and external debts.
(v) need to develop faster has led to huge expenditure on capital projects such as dams, roads, other infrastructure etc.
(vi) social disruptions such as wars, ethnic clashes, natural disasters etc have increased government expenditure
(vii) change over of governments - government spend on elections, legislators and local governments, etc
(viii) corruption e.g. over invoicing, inflation of contracts etc.