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{
    "id": 533683,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/533683/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 547,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Even at the national level, when Parliament requires money, it has no choice but to talk to the National Treasury. Anyone who has worked in the Government knows that there are sector ceilings. If they run out of the money that has been allocated to them midstream, they have to go and talk to the Treasury, so that they can get a supplementary allocation. Regarding that relationship of talking for established institutions like the national Government, the mechanisms are in place. Since the county governments are new, that mechanism of interaction, engagement and negotiation is still very difficult. I think that is one of the challenges they face. So, in our first recommendation, we have said that as much as possible, the county governments have to talk to each other. Yesterday, we told the County Assemblies Forum that there are no two ways about it. The Members of the County Assemblies have to talk to the members of the executive to access money, because the resources are the same. The second recommendation we made is that the Senate will, in due course, establish new guidelines on the approval of requisitions as well as new structures for accessing funds for the assemblies. We discussed this in Naivasha. We hope that by the time this House comes back from recess, the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) and the Controller of Budget, together with the national Treasury, will have advised this Senate on the fact that county assemblies can now access their money directly without going through the accounts of the county executive. Once the requisition is approved – and that approval must be notified in writing to the assemblies so that every assembly knows how much requisition has been approved for them by the Controller of Budget – the Exchequer release should go directly to the operational accounts of the county assembly and not the county executive. This will ensure that there is independence and county assemblies do not have to queue at the county executive committee member for finance’s office to beg for money. We have agreed on this with these institutions. We hope that for those counties that already have the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) operational, that must be put into effect within the next few weeks. Thirdly, we have set the ceilings on the Recurrent Expenditure for the financial year 2014/2015. We have recommended that the Controller of Budget in consultation with the CRA should release adequate funds to the county assemblies immediately. I think that we have made this very clear. We have told the CRA that it should be proactive in this matter. We do not want to see a situation where the CRA waits for a county assembly to come to it and tell them that they have run out of money. I think they need to write immediately to all those county executives where the assemblies have not negotiated for money to allow them to continue operating. This is a matter that we have directed and hope that they will comply. We have also said that pursuant to the Public Finance Management Act, the Senate should develop guidelines for approval of the recommendation of the CRA in respect of the budget ceilings for 2015/2016. This is a point forward for the next financial year whose ceilings we tabled earlier today. Going forward, the Senate must approve those ceilings in this House. Therefore, our Committee will come up with some guidelines to advise the Members. In fact, in this regard, we have advised that we will 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."
}