Embu County Assembly to legislate on Ksh 6.6 Million budget

BY JOEY KIMEU

The County Assembly has reallocated more than Ksh 100 Million meant for settling of

County Government pending bills to development projects for lack of supporting

documents.

The Legislature had earlier approved a budgetary allocation of Ksh 110 Million in the

2019/2020 Financial Year for payment of authenticated County Government pending bills

in adherence to prudent financial management, but upon scrutiny, it was observed that

there were no supporting documents availed in support of the pending bills.

The amount was therefore reallocated to finance other development priority projects

except Ksh 7.8 Million for the pending bills in the Education Science and Technology docket

which were supported. The county has been grappling with pending bills from contractors

and suppliers totalling to Ksh 1.3 Billion and had factored about Ksh 100 Million in the

2018/2019 budget.

In a report on the estimates of revenue and expenditure for the 2019/2020 Financial Year,

the Liaison Committee further requested authentication of any other pending bills before

submitting them for approval to the Assembly in line with legislative recommendations

through the Report of the Liaison Committee on the first supplementary budget for the

financial year 2018/2019.

The Assembly will next week legislate on a budget of Ksh 6,610,962,424 which comprises of

the equitable share of revenue from the National Government of Ksh 4,458,800,000, a

Conditional Grant to the County Level Five Hospital of Ksh 301,040,462, a Conditional

Allocation for Development of Youth Polytechnics of Ksh 33,603,298, and a Conditional

Grant for Compensation for User Fees forgone of Ksh 10,724,225 among other loans and

grants.

The budget will have a total allocation Ksh 3, 094,309,525 for the Personnel Emoluments

(salaries and allowances) representing 46.81% of the total resources, Ksh 1,237,051,834 for

Operations and Maintenance representing 18.71 % while development expenditure will

take Ksh 2,279,601,065 representing 34.48 % of the total resource basket.

Liaison Committee chairman Steve Simba revealed that the total local revenue component

to finance the budget will be Ksh 900, 000,000. This will comprise of a Ksh 511, 000,000

projection from the local sources (from the main revenue stream) and Ksh 389, 000,000

from other local revenue sources – Ministerial Appropriation-in-Aid (A-in-A).

The Runyenjes Central MCA observed that the Embu County Revenue Authority had already

been established and the e-revenue stream operationalised. These two measures are

expected to seal the revenue leakage, improve on revenue collection and administration of

the revenue collection.

The county has also draft revenue bills which are likely to provide the necessary legal

framework for management of local revenue in the county. In addition, the County

Executive Committee (CEC) member for finance will put in place revenue raising measures

through the Finance Bill, 2019 pursuant to section 132 (2) of the public Finance

Management Act,2012.

Simba’s Committee also observed that there were requests for employment of more staff

from the Education Science and Technology, Health, Lands physical Planning, Environment


Embu Finance and Economic Planning County Executive Committee (CEC) member John Njagi
and Urban Development, Youth Empowerment, Sports Gender Culture and social services,

infrastructure and Public Works, but with the limited resources it was not tenable to make

provision for more employment.




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