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{
    "id": 1081426,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1081426/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 667,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nyatike, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Tom Odege",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13459,
        "legal_name": "Tom Mboya Odege",
        "slug": "tom-mboya-odege"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. Allow me to support the Report on the Supplementary Estimates II presented by the Budget and Appropriations Committee. I have two issues of concern which I wanted to raise after supporting. When you look at the pending bills that we are talking about here, most of them in the ministries alongside the consumption rate are somehow stage-managed. If the Treasury is not releasing money to the ministries, ministries have nothing to spend. So, as much as we are budgeting and appropriating money to the ministries and the budget to the Government… If you go to Government departments, in these two weeks, you will realise the Government has pumped a lot of money to the departments, money which has been accumulated almost all through the year and departments are becoming busy for only two weeks. By the end of the day, you realise that most of the money is returned to the Treasury because the deadline is not met. So, we cannot wholesomely blame the pending bills and the consumption rate affecting the ministries on the ministries or the accounting officers. These things are purely stage-managed from the Treasury side. Coming down to how we contract most of our activities or our tendering system, we have a very rigid procurement system in the Government, which delays the implementation of projects. This, at the end of the day, trickles down to the rigidities, which makes spending on Government funding very difficult. At the end of the day, we talk about low consumption rate and pending bills. Right now, everybody in a government department is very busy. They are told that they are closing the financial year and just because we they are given money to commit in less than a month, most of the money will come back. If you are given the money which was to be spread throughout the year when you are remaining with only two weeks to the end of the year, you cannot achieve anything. The Treasury should be made accountable and if the budget is spread throughout the year, they should come up with a clear plan of allocating funds continuously. Even if it is quarterly, they should do it in an acceptable proportion, so that we do not accumulate a lot of money just to stage manage that the money is going down at the end of the financial year, then return the money without any expenditure incurred. So, if we do not get a clear system of utilisation of the funds, we will keep on pumping money to the Government, the money will keep going back to the National Treasury unspent and the projects will keep stalling."
}