The Council
of Governors has termed misleading claims by National Treasury CS John Mbadi
that all sharable
revenue due to counties in the current financial year has been disbursed.
Speaking in Kakamega county a day after the CS made the assurance, chair of the Finance Committee of the Council of Governors, Fernandes Barasa, said monies for September are yet to reflect in counties’ accounts.
"I would like to the Hon John Mbadi, stop misleading Kenyans,” he said.
The governor
lamented about excessive red tape and bureaucracy, which he said results in
untimely transmission of county funds from the national government to the
devolved units.
"It takes a
minimum of two weeks for the money to reflect in the County Revenue Fund whose custodian
is the Central Bank because we have a lot of bureaucracy and inefficiency in
the office of the controller of budget,” he said.
In his
statement on Monday, Mbadi said the National Treasury has since June disbursed more than Sh158 billion to counties, the latest being Sh30,833,969,289 billion for October.
He said an
initial tranche of Sh30,833,969,281 was released on July 26 for June followed by another Sh32,761,092,365 on September 24 for July.
A further
Sh30,833,969,289 was released on October 17 as August share, followed by
Sh32,761,092,366 was dispatched on November 14, this being allocation for
September.
Mbadi’s
statement came hours after CoG held an Extraordinary meeting to deliberate on the way
forward following the delayed release of shareable revenue.
They claimed counties
were surviving on 50 per cent revenue share from the national government
because the County Allocation of Revenue Act is yet to be assented to
facilitate full disbursements.
The county bosses said
the National Treasury was yet to disburse Sh63.6 billion for October and
November 2024 allocations, warning that if the delay persists past November,
there will be a total shutdown of services.
“By December 2024, the 50
per cent will have been exhausted which means counties will not receive any
disbursement from January 2025,” CoG chair Ahmed Abdullahi said.
Governor Barasa said
there is a need for a policy change to eliminate all the bottlenecks and
facilitate timely transmission of funds to counties.
“Funds for September were released last week but until now it has never reached the project designated account. We want to have reforms in the office of the controller of budget so that when money leaves the national government, that money must be reflected in the county revenue accounts and project accounts within 48 hours,” he said.
Governor Barasa lauded the Senate for approving Sh400.117 billion sharable to counties even as the The National Assembly pushes for the amount to be retained at Sh380 billion.
He said that's the amount counties need to effectively roll out development projects and services.
