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{
"id": 510349,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/510349/?format=api",
"text_counter": 154,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Mbarire",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 78,
"legal_name": "Cecily Mutitu Mbarire",
"slug": "cecily-mbarire"
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"content": "Therefore, the Committee recommends that Accounting Officers should institute measures to ensure that Bills are always cleared within the financial year they fall under. The National Treasury should ensure timely Exchequer releases to Ministries and departments to enable them settle bills as they fall due. The Cabinet Secretary for National Treasury should prepare a status report on the work of the taskforce on pending bills together with a schedule of all pending bills and submit the same to the National Assembly by 30th June, 2015, failure to which he will be held accountable. The fourth observation was that of the paradox of surplus funding. The Committee has noted that it has become a tradition for the Government to report of surplus funds at the end of financial years. For instance, during the year under review, that is 2012/2013, there was a reported surplus fund of Kshs.496,366,817. The Committee has taken time to keenly interrogate this position vis-a-vis the phenomenon of perennial pending bills, under-funding of projects and non-financing of projects. The Committee finds it supremely paradoxical that you would have a surplus fund while at the same time you are saddled with pending bills, under-funded projects and non-funded projects in the same financial year. Exactly, how would the Government have a surplus and a deficit at the same time? If this paradox is the reality, it is true that surpluses exit while the Government continues to bear costly deficits. Then this raised serious questions on the Treasury’s ability and capacity to manage the Budget. Hon. Speaker, the other observation is the collection of Appropriations-in-Aid, which we found to be a big problem, in so far as the Development Vote is concerned. The actual total Appropriations-in-Aid realised in the year under review amounted to about Kshs161,103,373,463 against estimated receipts of Kshs246,324,860,619 resulting in a deficit of Kshs85,220,713,157. The deficiency represented approximately 35 per cent of the estimated collections and was mainly recorded under the Development Vote, where collections of Kshs91,266,520,041 were realised against the estimated Estimates receipts of Kshs159,291,712,053. The Committee noted that failure by Ministries and Departments to comply with the conditions agreed with the development partners has been a major contributing factor. Development partners also contribute significantly to this problem by setting sometimes, impossible conditions including the insistence on retention of original accounting documents. It is, however, noteworthy that in a bid to address this challenge, the National Treasury has been developing the Kenya External Resources Policy, but the Committee is concerned that the process has taken too long and must now be concluded pronto. The Committee, therefore, recommends the following:- All Accounting Officers in liaison with the National Treasury should develop an implementer programme of action to comprehensively address the under-expenditure and under- collection of Appropriations-In-Aid in their respective Ministries and Departments. The National Treasury should ensure that the Kenya External Resources Policy is submitted to the National Assembly for adoption, not later than 31st December, 2014, to substantively address all the issues related to funding by development partners. Accounting standards is also one of the other observations that we made. In the year under review, the Committee noted several accounting errors in Appropriations Accounts. We also had numerous cases of balances in Appropriations Accounts and those in trial balances and ledgers were not agreeing or tallying. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}