Mombasa raises licence fee for private hospitals in revenue bid

 

Mombasa County Finance CEC Maryam Mbaruk during a consultative meeting organised by the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) in Mombasa County on Wednesday. [Kelvin Karani, Standard]

The cost of healthcare in Mombasa is expected to go up after the county government increased licence fees for private hospitals by Sh200,000.

The hospitals had been paying Sh300,000 before a new Finance Act came into force, introducing the 67 per cent increase.

Finance Executive Maryam Mbaruk said the new fee has already been effected.

The Finance Bill recently passed into law by the county assembly also saw the local government introduce a cargo offloading fee.

Ms Mbaruk said their decision to increase the licence fee followed a scientific study that also showed the effect of such a move on residents and the local healthcare sector. 

She said the county has also invested in public hospitals to ensure locals do not suffer because of the expected increase in the cost of health services.

She said the increment was necessary owing to mushrooming of private health facilities across the county. “We have already started levying the new fee. But it should be noted that before we raised the fee, we equipped public hospitals so that the common man is not affected,” Ms Mbaruk said.

But according to county sources, local revenue has been affected by some national government policies such as those on the evacuation of cargo from Mombasa, thus the need to find means to raise additional revenue.

“Mombasa is also disadvantaged by the revenue formula. It does not get a share of the 20 per cent that goes to agriculture because it is not an agricultural county,” said Ms Mbaruk.

She added: “Another criterion used is population and landmass. Mombasa is the smallest county, with a population of just 1.2 million people. Yet, we serve more than three million people every day.”

Mombasa is also grappling with the ballooning wage bill due to the big workforce inherited from the defunct municipal council.

“In Mombasa, the county government is the second biggest employer after Kenya Ports Authority. Among counties, we are second after Nairobi,” Ms Mbaruk said.

“The county has also frozen employment of new staff due to the ballooning wage bill. This is partly because the government is unable to tap revenue from ports and harbours as it had anticipated.”

Meanwhile, Ms Mbaruk told The Standard that the county government has abolished cess fees for lorries transporting goods into Mombasa. However, it introduced offloading fee.

The new law provides that exports offloaded inside the port will not be levied but those offloaded at the warehouses will be charged even if they will be exported later.

Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mombasa branch CEO James Kitavi fears the extra cost will be passed on to consumers.

Mr Kitavi said the chamber had proposed harmonisation of cess with counties that are major suppliers of Mombasa.