MPs on Tuesday sent away a National Treasury official who had appeared before them to answer to matters relating to non-funding of flagship government projects.
The Trade Industry and Cooperative committee of the National Assembly had invited National Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo to shed light on the matter.
However, the PS delegated the appearance to the ministry's Accounting Services and Quality Assurance Director-General Bernard Ndung’u.
The committee chair James Mwangi sought to know from Ndung'u why the Treasury failed to disburse any funds to among others, the SEZ projects despite a Sh500 million budgetary allocation.
“For the details of questions and particular projects, I see I am a bit incapacitated to respond,” said Ndung’u.
The MPs let him leave without making submissions and issued a seven day summon to the Cabinet Secretary and Principal Secretary to appear before the committee.
Among the issues the MPs are probing is how out of the Sh4 billion set aside for the coffee sector (through the Cherry Fund); only Sh500 million was directed to the ministry.
"It is only Sh500million that found its way to the ministry leaving a gap of Sh3.5 billion," said Mwangi
The committee is also raising issue with the move by Treasury to grant a go ahead for the rehabilitation of warehouses using the funding from the Cherry Fund.
"There were also rehabilitation of warehouses in the same sector and Treasury had given a letter allowing KPCU to proceed tendering of the project worth Sh600 million and we haven’t seen any allocation of such money,” added Mwangi.
The county aggregation centres, which were allocated a budget of Sh4.5billion in the last fiscal year, had listed 18 counties to undertake the project.
These devolved units were also expected to raise a counter fund of equal measure.
However, at the close of the 2023-24 financial year the National Treasury had only released Sh1.1 billion leaving a gap of Sh3.4 billion.
“All these projects in 18 counties are ongoing and our serious concern is how these projects will be handled going forward and they were at a stage of 20 per cent and above?” asked Mwangi.
The plan is facing uncertainties further this year with the projects hit by the reallocation of funding following the rejection of the Finance Bill 2024.
