Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 436819,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/436819/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 53,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "mandate of the county governments and which ones will be within the mandate of the national Government. That is part of the reasons those costings have not been done. The other thing I wish to mention, again, before I move on to the numbers is the issue of utilization of resources. This House has a mandate to oversee the utilization of funds that are sent to the county governments. This oversight function is very important. We all know of the challenges that were placed before us last year, but which, subsequently, even the courts have concurred with this House. This House has the mandate to do oversight and hold the county governments accountable. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, my Committee invited the Council of Governors to explain, particularly with regard to the reports of the Controller of Budget. I know that the County Pubic Accounts and Investments Committee will also be dealing with the audited reports from the Auditor-General, so that we exercise that mandate very carefully. One of the challenges that we have in this country is accountability. Questions of integrity have dogged our governments for a very long time. Everything time you read the newspapers the main concerns that we see are about utilization of resources. In the past one week, this House impeached a governor because of questions relating to accountability and utilization of resources. Yesterday a county assembly went ahead to impeach their governor. We can see these concerns all over this country about how those resources are utilized. We have a mandate to execute our responsibility in that respect. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, last year, the Division of Revenue Bill had an equitable share allocation of Kshs190 billion and conditional allocations of Kshs20 billion. The main reason we are doing this work is so that, through the County Allocation of Revenue Bill, we shall indicate how much of that revenue will go to each county. The county governments are then required to prepare their budgets based on that. The Public Finance Management Act sets 13th April, 2014 as the deadline for passing this Bill. Even as we debate this Bill now, we are already past the schedule because those county assemblies were required to have had the budgets from their county executives by 30th April, 2014. The good thing is that last year, out of the Kshs190 billion that was allocated equitably to the counties, the budgets that had been prepared by all those county governments had, at least, over 30 per cent of the funds allocated to development as required by the Public Finance Management Act. In each of the budgets, there is no county that did not allocate over 30 per cent of the resources to development. That is important because one of the things the people of Kenya want to see is that the resources are spent for the development of their counties. This year, we hope that with the proposed allocations, the county governments will be able to allocate more resources to the development of their respective counties. The Bill that has been presented to us proposes that the shareable revenue estimated this financial year is Kshs1.026 trillion. In the Schedule on page four, the Bill proposes that Kshs799.65 billion goes to the national Government and Kshs226.66 billion to the county governments. The figure for the county allocation is equitable share. This means that it is not conditional and the county governments have the mandate to utilize it for whatever activities, projects or programmes that they have. I agree with the Senate Majority Leader that Kshs226.66 billion is above the minimum threshold of 15 per cent. The Constitution in Article 203 requires that it must be above the minimum threshold of 15 per cent of the The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}