State Department for Devolution has pending bills totalling Sh2.8 billion out of which Sh771 million is associated with Africities Conference held in 2022, a House report shows.
The report of the Departmental Committee on Regional Development on Consideration of the Budget Policy Statement for the Financial Year 2024/2025 said pending bills remain a major concern for State Department of Devolution.
Committee chair Peter Lochakapong noted that failure to clear bills incurred during the conference has resulted in the closure of some businesses.
He noted that caterers are owed Sh127 million, audio system (Sh131 million), events and management (Sh210 million), transport (Sh17 million) and tents and accessories (Sh286 million).
For the first time, an intermediary city, Kisumu City hosted the 9th Edition of Africities Summit, in May 2022.
Africities is a Pan-African conference that is convened by the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa.
UCLG-Africa is a member of 51 national associations of local governments from all regions in Africa, as well as 2,000 cities and territories that have more than 100,000 inhabitants. The organisation represents nearly 350 million African citizens.
Africities Summit is the main platform for dialogue on decentralisation and local governance, African ministers, mayors, leaders and elected officials of local and regional governments, civil society organisations, traditional authorities, representatives of the African Diaspora, economic actors, experts, researchers and academics, financial institutions and development partners.
In its recommendation, the committee asked the State Department for Devolution Africities recurrent pending bill under the devolution support service programme.
The report said the State Department’s total resource requirement for the Financial Year 2024/2025 is Sh7.46 billion comprising Sh3.55 billion recurrent and Sh3.9 billion development.
“However, due to resource ceiling constraints, the State Department was allocated a gross total budget of Sh4.56 billion comprising Sh1.82 billion recurrent and Sh2.74 billion development translating to 39 per cent financing gap,” the report added.
The committee further recommended that the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee under the State Department finalise the transfer of devolved functions to county governments within the 2024/2025 fiscal period.
The committee also asked the department to invest in county management framework tool that will be used to measure and assess the performance of the devolved system of governance in Kenya as a way of accelerating county performance and reducing the fiscal risk associated with devolved system of governance.