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"content": "billion was utilized for development expenditure. Apparently, as a result, the overall absorption capacity was very low as shown in the Report. It was 79.9 per cent. Mr. Speaker, Sir, there are certain issues that are raised by the Controller of Budget and one of them is failure by counties to adhere to fiscal responsibility principles. I remember in the last Parliament, we were really fighting for counties to get more allocation. Unfortunately, there are shortcomings. Even after getting the monies that we requested, there are many challenges. One of them is Regulation 25(1)(a) of the Public Finance Management (County Governments) Regulations, 2015, which prohibits personal emoluments from exceeding 35 per cent of the total revenue. Unfortunately, you will find most counties are exceeding that limit. For example, Bomet County is above 44.4 per cent, which clearly took away part of the monies that were meant for other purposes, especially, development. A number of counties that exceeded the threshold include Taita-Taveta, Nairobi City, Nakuru, Tharaka-Nithi and Vihiga. As a result, these counties registered the lowest development expenditure as wages took up most of those revenues. As a House, we should not allow this to happen in those counties. In fact, in some counties, the development expenditure was less than the 30 per cent minimum requirement set by Section 107(5) of the PFM Act. If some of the counties are actually utilising the money provided for them, the less than 30 per cent, it is really very sad. As a House, we need to do something about this. We are trying to fight and see whether we can get some facilitation so that Senators can oversight the utilisation of this money in counties. It is very sad if some counties are utilising only 30 per cent of the budget allocated for them for development purposes. I believe that we need to do something as the Senate to make sure that this will not happen in the next financial year. Mr. Speaker, Sir, clearly, as a result of that low expenditure on development in these counties, this hindered some of the wages owing to staff. It is important to also note that unreasonable and inappropriate expenditure was in complete contravention of the law and contrary to the spirit of devolution. Five counties emulated the spirit of devolution and allocated most of their expenditure to development. Out of the 47 counties, Mandera, Turkana, Tana River, Kakamega and Wajir are the only ones who committed their money seriously to development. Again, the other concern raised by the Controller of Budget is that there is low implementation of the development expenditure in some counties which was caused by the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) connectivity challenges. This slowed down approval of procurement requests and payment to suppliers. When this happens, pending bills occur and implementation of certain projects delays. This has to be dealt with. Secondly, on this budget is the implementation of several supplementary budgets in a single financial year. You will find that some counties are requesting for three to four supplementary budgets. This clearly distorts the annual development plan of particular counties. Again, you find that some counties delay in paying bills which then accumulate and the result is changes in policy direction which should not happen. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}