- This is the first time there's a substantial decline in the pending bills.
- The drop is attributed to the move to freeze new capital intensive projects.
Image: FILE
The national government pending bills has dropped by Sh100 billion during President William Ruto’s second year in office, a recent report by the Controller of Budget indicates.
The report covering 2023-24 period shows that the bills have hit Sh516.7 billion as at June 30, 2024 compared to Sh622.82 billion in the same period last financial year.
This translates to Sh106.55 drop in monies owed to government contractors and suppliers.
This is the first time the country is seeing a substantial decline in the pending bills in years.
The drop is attributed to the government's move to freeze new capital-intensive projects to allow for the completion of the ongoing ones.
“The total national government pending bills as of 30th June 2024 amounted to Sh516.27 billion, compared to Sh622.82 billion reported as of 30th June 2023,” CoB Margaret Nyakang’o’s report reads.
According to the report, the bills comprise Sh379.81 billion for state corporations and Sh136.45 billion for ministries departments and agencies.
Under the MDAs’, the bills are mainly historical comprising Sh100.73 billion for recurrent expenditure and Sh35.72 billion for development spending.
During the review period, CoB recorded a decline of MDAs’ pending bills of about Sh42.18 billion.
The report that has been submitted to Parliament also indicates that state corporations’ bills mainly consists of payments due to contractors/projects, suppliers, unremited statutory and other deductions and pension arrears for Local Authority Pension Fund.
“The highest percentage of the state corporations’ pending bills (Sh235 billion as of 30th June 2024) was for contractors/projects at 62 per cent followed by pension arrears at 13 per cent,” the report indicates.
Article 228(6) of the Constitution and Section 9 of the Controller of Budget Act, Cap 429 requires the office of the Controller of Budget to submit to Parliament budget implementation reports of both the national and county governments 30 days after the end of each quarter.
The report comes amidst government push to clear pending bills that has seen untold suffering to many Kenyans who have their monies stuck, even after taking loans to complete projects.
To save the suppliers, government last year formed a pending bills verification committee to scrutinise the billions that the government owed to contractors.
The committee was formed following a Cabinet resolution, which called for the establishment of a team to audit all bills owed by the national and county governments to ease and facilitate payment.
It is expected to verify all bills owed by the government to ascertain their real value ahead of payments.
The team chaired by former Auditor General Edward Ouko has been tasked with the auditing government’s pending bills that have accrued between 2005 and 2022.
While he was being vetted in parliament, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi pledged to introduce a new accounting system to help address the issue of pending bills if approved.
The CS told the vetting panel chaired by Speaker Moses Wetang’ula the need to criminalise the failure by some government entities to pay.
"I will make sure that we have a system in place which locks anyone who attempts to pay a new bill and ignoring an old one...the system can lock you out, so that first in first out. If a bill is supposed to be payable let it be paid," Mbadi said.