Meet legal threshold in preparing 2014/15 budgets, counties advised

By Bryan Tumwa and Luke Anami

Kenya: Both the Commission for Revenue Allocation (CRA) and Controller of Budget (CoB) office want counties to adhere to legal requirements in preparing their budgets, which must be in place by end of this month.

CRA chairman Micah Cheserem advised that county budgets should be ready on time and the public allowed to give their input as per the constitutional requirement.

“Implementation of devolution only begun last year. There are a number of things that happened including the fact that budgets were prepared late. There was almost no public participation. We need the public to participate this time round,” Mr Cheserem said in an interview with The Standard.

Public participation

“County governments should therefore move with speed to ensure that the datelines for submitting the budgets are adhered to, to allow for public participation,” he said.

He also cautioned that the budgetary estimates should match the revenue resources of each individual county, plus the amount that is allocated based on the formula by CRA.

“We do not want a situation whereby the budget is more than the money. We should plan based on what we have,” he said.

CoB chief Agnes Odhiambo said most counties mixed up categorisation and classification of expenses in their last year’s budgets and now wants them to get it right this time round.

“Last year, most budgets from counties had a number of difficulties. Some did present balanced budgets while others overestimated revenue. The CoB analysed all those budgets and advised counties to revise them because a poorly formulated budget cannot be implemented,” Ms Odhiambo said.

The two major constitutional bodies made the observations as a number of counties went on with budgetary preparations for the financial year 2014/15, which are to be tabled in respective assemblies by the end of the month.

Development plans

Kakamega, Vihiga and Busia county assemblies are in the process of finalising preparation of their county integrated development plans and the medium-term fiscal plans, which will form the basis for scrutinising the budgets.

Kakamega County Assembly Speaker Morris Buluma said the county government had up to next week to submit the budget estimates for the assembly to scrutinise it.

Buluma observed that constitutional deadlines which were not strictly adhered to in preparing the 2013/ 2014 budgets have to be adhered to this time round.

Bungoma Speaker John Makali noted that time was running out yet the Executive had not carried ensure there was public participation in making the budgetary estimates.

“The process must be followed to the letter. I have not seen the Executive advertise for the public participation process. The public have to be informed by the Executive what is in the budget so that when it comes to the House, we shall do some fact-finding to establish whether the public are aware of its contents,” said Makali.

He also pointed an accusing finger at the Executive, as it has not yet submitted a cash projection to the assembly to show how much the county collects in local revenue and how much was received from the National Government.

Vihiga Speaker Daniel Chitwa said the county integrated development plan was being finalised to pave the way for the budget making process.