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"id": 1075760,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. (Dr.) Zani",
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"speaker": {
"id": 13119,
"legal_name": "Agnes Zani",
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"content": "Revenue Bill, a Division of Revenue from horizontal and vertical. For Division of Revenue Bill, it gave the vertical distribution of resources and now for the County Allocation of Revenue Bill, which is now a Bill, gives a specific horizontal distribution of the resources that need to get into the counties. This is adequately covered in Clause 3 Clause 3(b) is also very critical because it says that through this Act, it will facilitate the transfer of allocations made to the counties. It is not just putting these allocations in place but facilitate the transfer of allocations to counties under this Act from the Consolidated Fund to respective County Revenue Funds. That Clause is very key. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the issue of budget ceilings and these are included in Schedule 2 of the Bill are very critical and it took time. I remember some time back where county assemblies and the County Executives had to sit through to identify these particular budget ceilings. When allocations were done prior to that starting Financial Year 2013/2014, these budget ceilings had not been put in place. Now this Bill has appropriately done that. Another key aspect about this particular Bill is that funds should follow functions. For a long time, this has been talked about starting from Financial Year 2013/2014 and we know there were certain functions that should have gone to the counties that needed to be transferred to the counties. For example, libraries. The Senate at that time transformed ourselves into a Committee of the Whole and separated ourselves into different counties to identify functions that had moved and funds had not followed those particular functions including libraries. This Bill is very specific that whichever way, a respective County Assembly shall appropriate such monies as may be required for the transferred assumptions. This is important. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I have talked about the Controller of Budget in terms of spending and how the cash transfers should also be done. That is the basis of the confidence that is needed so that at the end of the day, when this allocation has been done to the counties, everybody is comfortable with what has happened. Counties must ensure that the actual transfers have been done to the county government. This is envisaged at Clause 3 and at Clause 8(3) that the County Treasury shall as part of its consolidated quarterly and annual reports required by the PFM Act report the actual transfers so that the actual transfers from the county treasuries need also to be reported appropriately so that we know exactly what has gone there. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, lastly at Clause 9, this is a misconduct clause that there is an offence and that offence is punishable under this particular Act. As the Chair of this Committee said as we are moving this Bill and also as the Vice-Chair said; this is one of the most important functions that the Senate does annually to ensure that counties receive this particular allocation. Schedule 1 is very clear and it gives several columns (a), (b), (c), (e), (f) and (g) that we have already expounded on. On Column (d) and (f), the allocation ratios have been allocated and the basis of the formula is clear to us in terms of the prepositions and the decisions that were done like money goes into specific counties and the specific allocations that have been put into place."
}