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{
    "id": 787884,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/787884/?format=api",
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    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, some of the challenges being faced by the counties at the moment is because the responsible entities that are dealing with collection of revenue, particularly, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) are unable to meet their targets which is partly attributed to the political environment we were operating in during the election period and the great amount of “noise” that followed. However, I am happy that we are past that level now so that our country can be busy growing our economy to ensure that our counties get the necessary resources that will be used to serve people at the county and the national level. Madam Temporary Speaker, when we talk about division of revenue, we are not only concerned about resources that are going to the counties but also the overall raising of resources by the entities at the national level. When we discuss this, there is the right expectation by the counties to get the resources that they can use from the national level because they do not operate in utopia or in the vacuum; they operate within the same entity, Kenya, which the national Government is presiding over. Counties do so through various economic activities that facilitate raising of the revenue. It is sad that some counties only want to talk about revenue raised nationally and not discuss locally raised revenue. When we were dealing with oversight responsibilities, we realised that in the Financial Year 2014/2015, revenue raised in Eldoret Municipality, Uasin Gishu County dropped from what former councilors used to collect, yet we believe there is an elaborate, funded and facilitated government in place which is expected to have a universal mandate from the people, unlike councilors who were elected by their colleagues to preside over either as a mayor or chairman, for example, of Wareng or Eldoret municipalities. We asked ourselves why; it is because some counties – not all of them – have this habit of now hiding behind revenue raised nationally to allow inefficiencies in the revenues that are collected locally. This has further led to situations where corruption is thriving at the county level because all of us are focused on the resources raised nationally. The thinking is that Senators will come and follow up because it is their responsibility to oversight, but no one is focusing on the resources raised locally, despite the fact that the taxation bracket was widened when the county governments came into place. There was madness and a competition in the counties as to what to tax. Keeping dogs, cats, cows, and even chicken became taxable. Madam Temporary Speaker, if I go back to what happened in the first term of many counties, there was madness around because the people in the counties wanted to tax anything and everything so that they could raise revenues. Despite all that, we still realised that counties were falling short of the responsibility to raise resources locally. Therefore, even as we devolve these resources, our message to counties must be very clear; that we cannot lose focus of the situation on the ground level to ensure that resources being raised locally must also be accounted for and must be used to benefit and serve the people. Secondly, the ability for us to devolve resources from the national Government to counties does not stop counties from working hard to attract investors. When we talk about investors, we are talking about the real investors. We do not want governors traveling to Bangkok in Thailand, saying that they are coming with investors because we 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."
}