Mbadi says development budget reduced from Sh715b to Sh583b

National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi addresses a past function. [File, Standard]

The National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has said the development budget for the Financial Year 2022/23 was Sh715.4 billion out of which Sh389.2 billion was to be funded through ordinary revenue, Sh292.8 loans and Sh33.3 billion grants.

Mbadi who appeared before the Senate plenary to answer questions said the original approved development budget estimates were however revised to Sh583.2 billion which comprised Sh357.9 billion funded through ordinary revenue, Sh190.5 billion loans and Sh34.7 billion grants.

Nominated Senator Catherine Mumma sought to know the allocation for development expenditure in the national government budget for the Financial Year 2022/2023 and the percentage of the expenditure that was financed by government's ordinary revenue, loans and grants from development partners.

Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna asked the CS what has occasioned the failure by the e-citizen digital platform to process and reflect payments made to some institutions such as the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) and steps taken to remedy the situation.

“Payments to e-citizen platform are made in designated and defined format, defined in the system, for any payment to succeed, it needs to follow the format expected by the system, for instance, if an NHIF member is paying for the monthly contribution with National ID 11223344 then the payment format to be keyed into the system will be NHIFM-11223344,” said Mbadi.

The CS explained that it was important for any person making payment to follow the prescribed format and as part of adoption they always insist that any Ministry or Department on the e-Citizen platform should train and sensitise its customers on the procedure of making payments.

Mbadi said that the National Treasury is working with Ministries, Departments and Agencies to create awareness on use of digital services and sensitize the public on the use and adoption of the e-Citizen platform.

Sifuna sought to know where the convenience fee charged and all other payments that fail to reflect on the platform end up, to which Mbadi responded that the e-Citizen platform only collects convenience fee for successful transactions.

“When a user or citizen makes a payment, the payment will be collected first, by the payment service providers channels which Include mobile money for Mobile Network Operators, RTGS and e-deposits for banks or wallets for nonbank payment service providers,” the CS said.

He explained that e-money is then channeled to e-Citizen collection account at Kenya Commercial Bank, if payment fails, then transaction details and monies (payment amount and convenience fee) are retained by payment service providers which reverses the transaction and e-Citizen platform is notified.

Sifuna asked Mbadi to give assurance on the safety, efficiency, efficacy and reliability of the e-Citizen payment platform, in light of complaints of delays and technical issues that followed the on-boarding of a significant number of Government services.

The CS said the e-Citizen platform has witnessed tremendous growth owing to the onboarding of more than 16,000 services from the previous 397 services, which came with lot of challenges that have since been resolved by the multi-ministerial team.

“So far, through Ministry of ICT & Digital Economy as the technology advisor and implementer, the platform information security has been built and implemented to ensure it is secure against cyber terrorism, hacking and compromises which are likely to disrupt the provision of services to the e-Citizen,” said Mbadi.

The CS said that the e-citizen platform has withstood attempted cyber-attack by hackers, due to continuous platform vulnerability risk assessment.

He revealed that the multi ministerial team has security operations centre which continuously monitors status of systems and applications and responds immediately to any attack.

Mbadi said there were some challenges encountered during rapid onboarding of the services, however they were addressed and the platform has immensely improved service delivery to citizens, processing approximately 120,000 transactions daily.

Embu Senator Alexander Mundigi sought to know why the disbursement of funds to counties has been delayed to for the last two months.

“I agree with senators transfer of funds to counties should be done regularly with several legal challenges affecting the distribution, I admit the National Treasury has not done disbursement to counties for August and September, everything is being done to address the delays,” said Mbadi.

Nominated Senator Esther Okenyuri sought to know why hospitals are owed millions of shillings by NHIF yet money had been paid through the e platform, to which the CS responded that there was fraud which led to the change of the health scheme to Social Health Authority.

Nominated Senator Tabitha Mutinda wondered why Kenyans should be charged to get National Identity Cards.

Mbadi also agreed that citizens should not be charged to be registered as Kenyans and should only paying for replacement of the document.

Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei sought to know the total pending bills in government, to which the CS responded that the problem was not knowing the amount but to establish their authenticity noting that currently pending bills stand at Sh644 billion but on verification they may go down to Sh 400 billion.

Mbadi said road contractors are owed Sh167 billion and the government is negotiating with them to complete the projects as it looks it ways of paying them.