By Lenah Bosibori
Nairobi County, Kenya: Almost all Counties in Kenya failed to report on their program achievements for the last nine months of FY2019/20 according to the Office of Controller of budget (OCOB).
In a report titled ‘County governments Implementation review report’ for the first nine months of FY2019/20 published in May, many Counties plan but they don’t follow their program based budgeting that is measured in milestones.
“Counties must show us the input and output of their budgeted programs, some Counties prioritize programs like buying best seed varieties for the farms and best quality varieties of animals, they end up buying only one item which is later left incomplete,” says Margaret Nyakango the Controller of Budget
According to Nyakang’o, the monies which are not used as programmed ends up in a different program compromising the budget allocation. They therefore do not concentrate on the programs set out.
Another challenge noted in the report was the issue of under-performance of own-source revenue collection. Many Counties are not supposed to use their own revenue collection before they have been authorized and if they use the COB can tell and that goes against the law.
Another challenge according to the report is high expenditure on personal emoluments like paying salaries and personal allowances.
“Counties are supposed to pay 35 percent of the total revenue of that county to salaries, if they go against, they end remaining with less available to do anything else,” adds Nyakango.
“We encourage counties to reduce staff if they are using a lot of money on salaries or increase their revenues,” adds Nyakango.
According to the report, Kshs.126.28 billion (52.3 percent) was spent on personnel emoluments, Kshs.65.34 billion (27.1 percent) on operations and maintenance, and Kshs.49.78 billion (20.6 percent) on development expenditure.
On the issue of the unused revenues in the county, Nyakango says that all counties give a quarterly report on how they have used their revenues and if they have unused in the accounts they must show.
“We give these counties a lot of money and we usually look at the county accounts to see for ourselves the money that is still there and if it adds up with the report, they have given us,” adds Nyakango.
The controller of the budget has cited the late submission of financial reports by the County Treasury to the Controller of Budget as the main challenge which affected the timely preparation of budget implementation reports.
“Counties should come up with measures to address the underperformance in own-source revenue collection so as to ensure the approved budget is fully financed.
