Ensure Adequate Planning, Utilization and Absorption of the county budgets

Posted byDr. Daniel Mutegi Giti, PhD.Posted inUncategorized

Counties will be allocated 409. 8 billion shillings in the 2021-2022 financial year budget if the proposals are adopted by parliament in the ongoing budget making process. In the draft County allocation of Revenue Bill 2021, the counties will receive Kenya shillings 370 billion as their equitable share of the revenues the country will have raised, they will also receive Kenya shillings 7.5 billion as conditional allocations from the national government, in addition to the counties receiving Kenya shillings 32.3 billion in form of loans and grants from the development partners. Some of these loans are coming from projects like Kenya Urban Support Programs (KUSP) which has greatly improved the infrastructural conditions of urban areas and also the proposed second phase of Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project (KISIP), which in phase one led to improvement of the living conditions of people living in slums and informal settlements in selected counties.

Counties should leverage on such projects to create an enabling environment for the wealth and employment creation in the local areas. They should also link up these projects with their own funded programs such that they can attain a seamless network of infrastructure, which reduces the capital investments. This allocation for the counties will be the highest since the advent of devolution in 2013. It also shows that by then, counties will have received on average some 90 billion or so for the majority of the counties.

These allocations are set to increase under the BBI debate once it considered and approved by stakeholders. Many have argued that the promise to increase the funds to 35% of the national revenue to counties is not possible, but I beg to differ with such critics. The real challenge for the disbursement of funds in Kenya has been the fact that counties do not take preparatory activities during the time in which money haven’t been disbursed. This means that they start undertaking planning, preparations and necessary approvals when the quarter is ending and as such, they end up returning lots of unutilized funds to the National Treasury.

The increased allocations should be followed by water tight plans and program which are prepared beforehand. This is a wakeup call for counties to adequately plan and utilize the allocated funds for the citizens to realize value for money from their taxes

Published by Dr. Daniel Mutegi Giti, PhD.

I hold a Ph.D. in Urban Management; Master of Urban Management and Post Graduate Diploma in Housing from the University of Nairobi. My Undergraduate was a Geography major and Sociology minor from Egerton University. I am an Assistant Director for Housing - Slum Upgrading, State Department for Housing and Urban Development, within the Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing, Urban Development and Public works in Kenya. I have hands on experience on matters housing and urban development process in Kenya, including developing skills necessary to tackle the underfunding of housing and urban sectors through innovative financing and greater private sector participation through models like application of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the infrastructure and housing development in Kenya and Africa.

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