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{
    "id": 1408727,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1408727/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 175,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I also rise to share a few thoughts concerning this Bill as captured in both Articles 203 and 204 of the Constitution. This Bill proposes about Kshs7.8 billion as Equalization Fund to go to the counties. I just want to speak to two issues because of pressure of time. If I had 20 minutes, I would have talked about other adventurous things. Just to jog our minds, this Bill projects that we will have revenue allocation for FY 2024/2025 estimated at Kshs2.9 trillion. Out of that, based on what the National Treasury had brought, the national Government share of Kshs2.9 trillion should be Kshs2.5 trillion. If you do the maths, that represents 86.47 per cent of the total revenue that we are projecting. The National Treasury proposed that county governments should get Kshs391 billion. If you do the maths, the share of that is 13.3 per cent of the total revenue that we project. Of course, the dictates of Article 203 require that in this kind of division, we should allocate at least 15 per cent of the last audited financial reports. The last audited financials of the country were those of FY 2020/ 2021. That means that if you were to go with what the National Treasury proposed, then the equitable share would be about 24 per cent of the last audited financials. When you do the maths, it looks good as if you have given counties so much money. However, in the thickness of things, that would only mean that the increase to county governments, based on what we gave them last year, would only be 1.5 per cent. I am glad that this committee, after doing some maths and looking at a number of things, proposed Kshs415.9 billion as equitable share that we should give to counties. This is something that the House should rally behind, as well as the National Assembly, because the kind of pressures that counties are facing today are so many. The words “equitable share” must be equitable, both in meaning and in deed. If you look at the growth factors of our revenue that affect us nationally, there are a number of things we must start fighting for. The first thing that we should care about as The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}