Entry Instance

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

{
    "id": 843021,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/843021/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 263,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Mwaura",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13129,
        "legal_name": "Isaac Maigua Mwaura",
        "slug": "isaac-mwaura"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, I rise to thank Sen. Olekina for allowing me to jump the queue. That is kind of him. Recently when we were at the ASAL Conference, we had some informal conversation with some people. After many governors had presented on how they are doing well in their counties, someone asked whether it is them or the counties they come from. That summed it all. We are here to approve the County Disbursement Schedule to governors who I heard Sen. Omogeni describe as “payroll masters” but I disagree with that. County governors are doing well. This morning, we were discussing this matter somewhere. The truth of the matter is that the devolution aspect is working in some places and not in others because governors have learnt how to circumvent the law. They are not accountable to their source of revenue because they assume that it is their own kitty. If you looked at the last report of the Controller of Budget, you could tell the counties were doing badly, including Nairobi and Kiambu counties among others. We have a problem because of liquidity and cash flow management issues at the National Treasury with regard to how we receive our revenue. We have three sources of revenue which are rates, loans and private equity. We were advised that we have an economy that is 25 per cent richer than it actually is. I think that was ingenious of our competitors looking at the effect of the economies to make African economies to stall because this has predicated us to have a high appetite for debts. Currently, our nominal debt is at Kshs5.1 trillion. As a result, therefore, it has become extremely difficult to finance the operations of counties because a huge chunk of the monies that are designated for counties are supposed to come from loans. That is the truth of the matter. Theoretically, we would first divide the sharable revenue through the Division of Revenue Bill which, as a consequence today, we are discussing how to disburse monies in the Schedule as presented therein. Because of the issues of cash flow and liquidity, collection, missing of targets and repayment of loans that we took before, it follows that counties are at the lower end of priority when it comes to availability of cash at the National Treasury. 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."
}