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"content": "Nyandarua, Tana River and Tharaka-Nithi. After consultations, it was agreed that the construction of the headquarters be funded at a cost of Kshs518 million for the assembly and the executive. The national Government will contribute 70 per cent of this budget and the county government will contribute 30 per cent. Therefore, we support this agreement which will be done outside the Bill. However, we have urged the National Treasury to consider an allocation to other deserving counties in successive financial years. There are many other counties that do not have suitable offices even as I speak. The Committee also acknowledged that there is a credit facility that the World Bank proposes to extend to support both the national and county governments on capacity building, in particular with regard to public financial management and civic education. However, the Committee has expressed concern because we feel that money, about Kshs1.4 billion, is a huge amount of money to be spent merely on capacity building. We find it important that the World Bank and other donors should be channeling funds in the counties towards development. We have seen in a report discussed here yesterday, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) giving up to Kshs73 million to build capacity of the Council of Governors (CoG) yet the same institution is getting Kshs265 million for the same purpose from the National Treasury and also Kshs1 billion from the county governments. It is important that donors appreciate that any funding given to the county governments should as much as possible be channeled towards development projects. Concerns have been raised, legitimately so that these funds for capacity building are often spent in hotels and conferences yet these are credits that Kenyans ultimately have to pay. Lastly, we also observed with a lot of concern, the prevailing condition of pending bills in counties arising out of poor fiscal management and budget implementation by the county governments. We are of the view that the county governments should ascertain and clear these pending bills as a matter of urgency to avoid financial crisis in subsequent years. We recommend that this be looked into within the Intergovernmental Fiscal Framework which includes the CoG, the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA), the National Treasury, the Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council (IBEC), county assemblies, the Senate and other institutions. Further to the statement that I read earlier on, it is important to state very clearly that county governments have no reason to incur debt beyond a particular financial year. Before the end of that financial year, they would have received all the monies which they have budgeted for. So, they should fund all their commitments from allocations. So, any county government in breach of that and creating outstanding or pending bills for two or three years---. Clearly, that is a serious breach of financial regulations and, therefore, the National Treasury can take action under Article 225 of the Constitution. Therefore, our recommendation is as follows:- “We propose that the county equitable share of Kshs280,300,000,000 and the conditional allocation of Kshs21,897,516,719 bringing the total county allocation for the Financial Year 2016/2017 to Kshs302,197,516,719 as contained in the Division of Revenue Bill (National Assembly No.4 of 2016) be adopted by this House.” Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we, as a Committee, recommend that we adopt this 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"
}