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{
    "id": 357789,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/357789/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 82,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "them through the devolved system of government. We need to put enough effort to make sure that those governments succeed and that we do not set them up to failure. Hon. Speaker, Sir, it should be remembered that this House received the Division of Revenue Bill for 2012/2013. I remember very well that we took time with the national Treasury to go into the details of costing - that is, how much each county would get in order to run effectively and efficiently. You realize that at that time, the national Treasury gave us a total of Kshs185 billion as the minimum that you require to devolve to the counties in order to meet the bare minimum of Recurrent Expenditure. We even went ahead to prepare a breakdown for each county. For example, Mombasa County needs not less than Kshs6 billion to run for a year. You need Kshs16.9 billion to run Nairobi. Where I come from, Homabay, you need almost Kshs4.79 billion. The total adds up to Kshs185.5 billion. When we get a Division of Revenue Bill that gives only Kshs154.7 billion and I hear my friend eloquently telling us that they have already negotiated--- I do not agree with that negotiation because once this Bill is a property of the House. Whatever CRA needs to do with Treasury, they should do it through Parliament. I am at variance with the fact that an independent Commission would go to Treasury to negotiate a matter of such importance. If they were to negotiate, they were to do so before we receive this Bill. Actually, they had sufficient time before March to negotiate. So, I take exception to that. However, even with Kshs175 billion, it should go on record that, that amount of money is not enough to run counties even in terms of Recurrent Expenditure. Therefore, we will be denying our counties funds. Actually CRA had done a costing. As Parliament, we also did our costing. The CRA’s costing was coming to Kshs231.1 billion. We asked Treasury how much it costs them to run the functions being devolved to the counties. They gave us a figure which we worked with and got that for each county to run and be able to get involved in Development Expenditure, it needs Kshs237 billion. Therefore, the minimum you can give a county--- Hon. Speaker, Sir, I will move an amendment tomorrow to increase the minimum shareable revenue to counties to not less than Kshs230 billion unless we want the counties to fail. There is the issue of conditional grants which the Treasury has proposed as Kshs43.9 billion. If you look at the Finance Management Act talking about funds taken to the counties, it is very clear that any amount that you put under the line of county government should be sharable. If there is any conditional grant, that should come under the heading of the national Government funds. So, trying to put conditional grants to counties is trying to hide something. The reason why we came up with the devolved system of government is that we realized there was historical injustice, that there were some counties or areas that were favored in this county while others were denied opportunity to progress. Therefore, lumping money that is specifically going to certain targeted areas of this country under conditional grants is mischief and should be excluded. We need a breakdown of that Kshs43.9 billion so that we can know which counties are going to benefit. I know there are more stakes about Kshs10 billion but there is extra that is going to operations that we are told are ongoing activities. We want to know: Where are those ongoing activities? If they are in Homa Bay, we want to know how much is in Homa Bay, Kakamega, Nyeri or Turkana counties so that we exclude and eliminate this idea of the national Treasury trying to favour some regions as opposed to others."
}