By S, KNA
The Prime Cabinet Secretary and Cabinet Secretary for Foreign & Diaspora Affairs, Musalia Mudavadi, has challenged the county governments to focus more on raising their own revenue instead of depending entirely on the national government allocation.
Speaking in Busia yesterday during the launch of capacity building for county governments on Economic Planning, Mudavadi emphasized that true strength of devolution of counties will manifest when counties will harness locally available streams of revenue and to fund their majority of their operations.
“Several counties have abandoned working on their own sources of revenue and are becoming totally dependent on the national share. The data shows that in some counties, the revenues that are collected is less than that which was being collected during the days of local councils. Those figures speak of serious laxities that need to be addressed,’ he said.
On the border counties, the CS suggested the need to look at the whole model of budgeting for counties that borders Uganda.
“Uganda is our largest trading partner but Busia and other counties bordering it, benefit least from the revenues that emerge from that partnership. We need to see how people who border Uganda can benefit from these revenues,” he said.
He also urged the county governments to ensure their resource management records are accurate including their land tenure system.
“Ensure there is clarity on the lease time between an investor who wants to set up a company and the time you give him clearances for him to set up a company. Let’s figure out how to provide an environment to attract the investors in our counties. Let us not be too hostile to our investors,” he said.
Vihiga County Senator, Godfrey Osotsi, said that the disbursement of funds from the national government to the county government have caused delays in development in counties.
“We want county governments to be receiving their funds on every 15th day of the month. Sometimes we have witnessed delays up to 3 to 4 months and this is what is causing pending bills and derails the development plans in our counties,” Osotsi lamented.
Osotsi asked the National treasury to ensure it disburses the funds on time to the counties.
“We want the national treasury to ensure that if there are delays, they should not go beyond one month so that the counties can be able to plan for their projects and finance their projects well. Borrowing of loans to sustain itself has caused counties to spend much interest in repayments of the loans,” he said.
He lamented that the pending bills had been a result of poor planning, calling for budgetary discipline to ensure the issue is dissolved,
“If we have budgetary discipline in our counties, we will not have pending bills in future. We need to address the issue of budget control in our counties. We are also calling on the office of the controller of budget to ensure that their system is able to process requests on time so that counties can use the money,” he said
Osotsi at the same time challenged members of county assemblies to be more proactive in overseeing their own source of revenues targets are met.
Nairobi Senator, Edwin Sifuna, urged the national government to follow the disbursement schedules that are passed by the senate.
“The national government has not been fully following the disbursement schedule for the revenue to the county government. Sometimes counties have gone 3 months without receiving their disbursement and this has caused a challenge for the counties to conduct their businesses resulting to many pending bills to counties.” he said
Sifuna further stated that the government should prioritize the counties on revenue to promote devolution.
“We have seen the national government prioritizing its projects. But if we really mean to protect and promote devolution, let the county government be given the priority when it comes to revenue distribution,” he said.
