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"content": "permanent secretaries and, as you know, the permanent secretaries in charge of finance will be the accounting officers for the county governments. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, some county governments may have even gone further and actually recruited staff for their county treasuries. So, what this means is that there is a possibility that there are county governments where the treasuries are still being run by people who have been seconded on transitional basis to the county governments by the TA. That is one of the reasons why it has been felt necessary that we must have this Act extended by a further six months, up to 30th June, 2014. The second reason, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, is with regard to the revenue raising measures; it was up to the county governments to have, through their county assemblies, prepared their Finance Acts that would set the rates and charges that they want to charge for respective services. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, as you know, quite a number of the counties are still in the process of setting up their Finance Acts; very few have, in fact, been able to enact them. I think Nairobi County Government is one of those that have published their Finance Bill in this regard. So, these are some of the reasons why it has been felt necessary that we should give the TA time, perhaps, to ensure that this is in place. Lastly, Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I think one of the reasons is that, there is a period of transition with regards to operationalisation of the county treasuries themselves in terms of training and in terms of getting people to understand how to use the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), for example; in terms of getting people to understand how to prepare their accounts, and so forth. However, what is important is that some of the provisions which are here have actually been addressed. For instance, all the counties have already prepared their budgets for 2013/2014 – this is a fact – and all of them have had their budgets already approved by their respective assemblies. They have already received revenues in the county revenue funds for September and for August, and they have started using this money. So, with regard to some of the measures that are here, I think they are no longer in transition, but it was felt that it is important that we extend the validity of this Act by at least a further six months to ensure that those counties that are still having challenges can catch up. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, one of the measures that this Bill seeks to address is revenue raising measures. In other words, the county governments are required to enact laws with regard to revenue collection in their counties. As you know, the only revenues being collected in these counties before were revenues which were being collected by the defunct local authorities. It is now up to the county governments to come up with their own laws under the legislation that is passed in their own local assemblies – the Finance Acts – to collect revenue. Revenue is a very important aspect of the responsibility of the county governments. The national revenue that is shared out to the county governments is not adequate to provide services in the counties. It is their responsibility to ensure that they identify what potential exists in each county for revenue and come up with laws regarding how to collect it and how to charge it. From the trips we have done to the counties, it is becoming apparent that some counties are not collecting revenue very well. In fact, quite a majority of the counties are collecting much lower revenue than what the local"
}