The absorption gap: why development allocations are not being spent
Allocation and expenditure have diverged across three consecutive years, and the gap is widening.
Development expenditure is allocated annually and reported annually. The two figures have diverged for three consecutive years.
The divergence is not explained by revenue. Allocations were funded. The shortfall is in disbursement.
Analysis of departmental reporting shows the gap concentrated in projects requiring central concurrence at more than one stage. Projects with a single approval point disburse close to allocation. Projects with three or more do not.
Officials describe a sequencing problem. Concurrence requests queue behind one another, and a project that misses a quarterly window effectively loses a quarter.
The cumulative effect is significant. Across the three years examined, the undisbursed amount is larger than the annual allocation for several individual ministries.
The treasury has previously attributed the gap to project readiness. Departmental data does not support that explanation as the dominant factor: readiness delays are present but do not correlate with the concurrence count, and the concurrence count does.
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