Laikipia county government has attained sh1.36 billion own source revenue mark surpassing its Sh1.35 billion targets for the 2025/2026 financial year.
Governor Joshua Irungu announced that this has been a remarkable achievement indicating that the county’s own source revenue has been on an upward trajectory since the 2022-23 financial year when the collection was at 900 million.
“Laikipia for the first time has surpassed its own source revenue targets against a target of Sh1.35 billion, the county realized Sh1.365 billion achieving 101 percent performance and exceeding that target by more than Sh15 million,’ said the governor.
The county boss highlighted that the target was a remarkable achievement that demonstrated prudent leadership, sound financial management and strong institutions can deliver meaningful results even in a challenging economic environment.
“This is a remarkable milestone that demonstrates prudent leadership, sound financial management. These achievements represent the resilience of our local economies and the successful reforms we have implemented to strengthen revenue administration,” said the county boss.
Irungu revealed that compared to previous years, the total of own source revenue increased from Sh1.22 billion to Sh1.365billion representing a growth of Sh143 million or 12 percent.
He said that the achievement was a result of deliberate reforms where he also lauded his administration for the stellar performance.
Some of the reforms he said boosted the performance included enhanced enforcement, improved performance management, stakeholder’s engagement, implementation of Laikipia county valuation laws 2022 and enactment of finance act 2026, adding that the initiatives had enhanced compliance in revenue collection.
Further, he noted the health department and Trade were the major contributors in the revenue basket revealing that the hospital’s facilities were equipped with modern machines which generated revenue.
The governor however decried that the county faced setbacks on revenue collections including delayed reimbursements from Social Health Authority (SHA), industrial actions in some health facilities, inadequate operational resources and prevailing economic pressures facing businesses.
“While we celebrate this success, we remain mindful of the challenges that affected revenue collections during the year one being industrial actions and reimbursements from Social Health Authority,” said Irungu, adding that his administration was working to automating revenue collections systems, improving customer services aimed to boost the revenue for the next financial year.
He urged Laikipia residents to continue paying their taxes promising that more development projects will be ploughed back to match the revenue collection.
By Muturi Mwangi
