Treasury, KRA in a spot over variation in figures

By JAMES ANYANZWA

The National Treasury and the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) have raised eyebrows after issuing conflicting reports on revenue performance, casting doubts on the authenticity of figures released.

 The latest difference comes barely a year after the office of the Auditor General also queried the glaring variation in the financial statements issued by the Exchequer and its revenue collection agency.

On Tuesday, KRA Commissioner General John Njiraini announced that the authority surpassed its revenue collection target for the six months by Sh600 million, accumulating a total of Sh470.8 billion against a target of Sh470.2 billion.

But 24 hours later, the Treasury, through a presentation made by a director in-charge of Economic Affairs department Justus Nyamunga said the economy underperformed in terms of revenue collection during the period under review, missing its target by Sh10.4 billion.

Mr Nyamunga said the underperformance in ordinary revenue was mainly reflected in excise and income taxes.

“Even though performance in ordinary revenue indicate cumulative shortfall, the overall annual growth has been encouraging and we remain optimistic that the revenue target for the financial year 2013/2014 will be met,” he said.

“We will continue to monitor closely revenue performance, especially the VAT, after the new law has taken full effect,” he said.

However, these statistics were, immediately rejected by the taxman.

“The figures we released on Tuesday are the figures we want to confirm as true figures. We stand by the figures we released on Tuesday and I don’t want to confirm the figures from the National Treasury because I don’t know how they got their figures,” said Ezekiel Maru, Deputy Commissioner in-charge of the Taxpayers Service Division, Marketing &Communication Department at KRA.

Efforts to obtain a comment from National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich were unsuccessful.

It is feared that the disparity in reporting could create a loophole in which taxpayer funds are lost.

For instance, the absolute difference in monetary terms between the Treasury and KRA records during the 2011/2012 financial year stood at Sh5.79 billion, according to a report by the Auditor General dated May 23, 2013.

In addition, a number of ministries and departments failed to account for expenditures totaling Sh5.21 billion in various appropriation accounts.

And in a development that could put the two state organs on a collision path, the taxman has disowned the numbers issued by the National Treasury.

On the fore is the revenue collection performance for the first half (July-December) of the current financial year, which have left the public baffled after technocrats at the Treasury and the taxman conveyed mixed signals about the state of the country’s financial health.

The Office of the Controller of Budget also warned against the failure by Government ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to account for internally generated funds they use to partly finance their development projects.

Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo said incomplete expenditure returns by the MDAs affected the smooth implementation of the budget during the first three months (July-September) of the 2013/2014 financial year.

Mrs Odhiambo noted that a number of MDAs had more expenditure than the Exchequer issued during the period under review.

This, she said, had been attributed to spending resources realised through Appropriation-in-Aid (A-I-A).

“However, financial reports submitted to the Controller of Budget do not provide complete information on how much is collected as A-I-A,” said Odhiambo.