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{
    "id": 1378535,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1378535/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 191,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nominated, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. John Mbadi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "report, we will give a brief to the House on how much we have spent as a country on interest charged on delayed payments and incomplete projects. Therefore, the Committee recommends that the National Treasury should only approve projects whose funding and completion within the medium-term economic framework can be guaranteed. No new projects should be commenced by an agency before all existing ones are completed or fully funded. Accounting officers are further warned of personal responsibility should contractors fail to perform, considering evaluation of technical and financial capacity of bidders is mandated under the procurement law. Any procurement process requires that bidders are evaluated on the basis of technical and financial capacity. However, you will still find contractors who are unable to discharge and complete projects, either for lack of technical capacity or financial inability to finance implementation or execution of the contract. Failure to enforce and/or recall performance guarantees will also be personally remedied by accounting officers. The fourth cross-cutting issue is non-existent or weak internal audit functions. The Committee noted numerous instances where internal audit committees were non-existent or did not meet regularly as prescribed by law. The law prescribes that there should be a meeting of internal audit committees at least once every three months. However, many Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) do not observe that. The Committee observed that the current practice where accounting officers appointed and facilitated audit committees may be a hindrance to the effectiveness of those committees as they are required to report to the same accounting officer on breaches by the same. The current practice is that those committees, which are supposed to oversee accounting officers, are appointed by accounting officers. How do you appoint someone who will oversee you? It does not make sense. Therefore, the Committee recommends that the National Treasury submits a proposal to the National Assembly within six months of adoption of this Report de-linking internal audit functions in terms of appointment, facilitation and reporting from accounting officers to an independent office. The fifth cross-cutting issue is budgetary control and performance. All MDAs faced budgetary under-performance predominantly attributed to late exchequer releases, supplementary budget cuts, or incapacity to collect Appropriation-in-Aid. This invariably led to under-performance of programme objectives and lack of service provision to the public. Therefore, the Committee recommends that the National Treasury and the National Assembly, through the Budget and Appropriations Committee and the Departmental Committee on Finance and National Planning, make realistic revenue projections and attainable expenditure estimates starting with the 2024/2025 Budget Estimates. The reality is that we are over-budgeting as a country. We are budgeting for money that is on paper and that cannot be realised. We need to be realistic about our projections. Our Parliamentary Budget Office has always warned us every financial year that the revenue projections from the National Treasury are unrealistic. However, we continue and go ahead to approve them. The sixth cross-cutting issue is pending bills. Related to the above, which I have just mentioned on budget control and performance, State agencies have seen accrual of huge sums of pending bills largely blamed on inadequate exchequer release and budget rationalisation after commitments have been made and goods and services procured. As at August 2023 when we were conducting our investigations, total pending bills which are loans given to the Government of Kenya by ordinary business people had accumulated to Ksh567 billion. I am not talking about millions but billions. This amount should be added to the figure that I see being floated around as our indebtedness as a nation, of Ksh11.2 trillion. We are about Ksh12 trillion in terms of indebtedness as a country. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor"
}