Cheserem wants State to transfer functions to counties by March

Commission for Revenue Allocation chairman Micah Cheserem

The Commission for Revenue Allocation (CRA) has asked the national government to transfer all devolved functions to counties.

CRA said operations still being performed by ministries, departments and agencies should be devolved before March in accordance with the Constitution.

The commission has urged national government entities to focus on functions assigned by the Constitution under the Fourth Schedule, which is mainly regulation and policy formulation and cede implementation of devolved functions to county governments.

While releasing CRA’s recommendation on sharing revenue for the 2016-2017 financial year, commission chairman Micah Cheserem said spending by national government entities had been on the rise, especially recurrent expenditures, despite the fact that most functions were devolved.

“In 2012/13 the recurrent expenditure was Sh808.3 billion, which increased marginally in 2013/14 to Sh815 billion, but rose sharply to Sh897 billion in 2014/15.

“This expenditure is projected to continue to increase given that in 2015/16, the national government estimates on recurrent is Sh1,017.5 billion and this will increase further to Sh1,112 billion in 2016/17. Development expenditure is projected at Sh705.6 billion in 2016/17,” said Mr Cheserem.

DELIBERATE MEASURES

The CRA chair said the Government needed to implement deliberate measures to curb recurrent costs for the country to realise high and sustainable growth rates needed to achieve Vision 2030.

Cheserem said the total revenue for county governments for 2014/15 was Sh304.87 billion.

This comprised Sh226.7 billion from equitable share, Sh1.87 billion conditional transfer for level five hospitals, Sh733.65 million grants from Danida, Sh41.67 billion from cash balances from 2013/14 and Sh33.9 billion from counties own source revenues.

He lauded county governments’ effort to raise their own revenue to support the budget, noting it was very crucial in provision of county services.

“The county governments in the financial year 2014/15 raised Sh33.9 billion against a target of Sh50.4 billion, which is a performance rate of 64 per cent.

“However, this was an improvement of 28 per cent from 2013/14 when counties managed to raise Sh26 billion. The improvement in revenue collection in some counties can be attributed to automation of revenue,” said Cheserem.

He indicated that continued improvement in collection of own source revenues would enable counties have sufficient resources to perform optimally the functions assigned to them.

Cheserem named Nairobi, Mombasa, Kiambu, Narok, Nakuru and Machakos as counties that collected the highest own source revenue as a proportion of their total budgets. Most of the marginalised counties collected less than four per cent of their total budgets.

He noted allocation to county administrations for building and rehabilitation of county roads was grossly underfunded.

“This is because the national government has continued to allocate resources to Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA) to construct, maintain and manage rural road network in the country classified as D, E & Others and Kenya Urban Roads Authority (Kura) mandated to develop, manage, rehabilitate and maintain roads in all urban areas and cities in Kenya,” Cheserem said.

But he indicated KeRRA and KURA were largely doing county functions.

“These need to be streamlined and Sh4.5 billion transferred to counties from the national government share of revenue if the Transition Authority transfers functions performed by Water Services Boards and Regional Developed Authorities to the county governments before the County Allocation of Revenue Bill 2016 is enacted,” the chairman said.

Cheserem noted that waters services boards as currently constituted were agencies of the State.