Many counties may not be able to undertake development projects planned for the year ending June and could end up with higher pending bills, owing to the Treasury’s delays in releasing funds to them.
By the end of March, the Treasury had released Sh223.5 billion (58 percent) of the funds it is expected to disburse to the devolved units in the current fiscal year, the latest data shows.
This means that there is a balance of Sh161.9 billion that the Treasury will need to disburse to counties over three months (April to June 2024)—an equivalent of Sh54 billion monthly for the period.
This creates a headache for the Treasury with a Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) that has been struggling to collect taxes since the balance is more than double the Sh24.8 billion average monthly disbursements it has made to counties over the past nine months.
Last week, Council of Governors (CoG) Vice Chairperson Ahmed Abdullahi (Wajir governor), raised concerns that most of the counties were accessing their January disbursements this month.
“In another one month or so, the Controller of Budget (COB) will release a report on expenditure for quarter three (January- March 2024). A lot of the counties are accessing their January disbursements this week,” Mr Abdullahi said on April 15.
He noted that such counties did not access any of the quarter-three allocations during the period.
