Counties to join single bank account starting July

The National Treasury building.

Photo credit: File| Nation Media Group

Counties will be onboarded onto the Treasury Single Account (TSA) starting in July as the government moves to consolidate all its monies to improve public cash management.

This is even as the size of the national budget for 2025-26 was retained at Sh4.32 trillion, according to the 2025 Draft Budget Policy Statement (BPS) for 2025.

The Budget Review and Outlook Paper released last year also set the budget for 2025-26 at Sh4.32 trillion.

The National Treasury says all 47 counties will be migrated to the TSA, as the Finance ministry moves to gain visibility of public finances and control to improve the speed and transparency of budget execution.

TSA is a unified structure of government bank accounts that enables the consolidation and optimum utilisation of government cash resources.

The Cabinet in January last year gave its nod for the implementation of the system as it eyed the billions in bank deposits by the national government and other public sector entities.

The implementation of TSA will be rolled out in three phases. The first phase, launched last year, comprises the migration to the TSA environment of all State organs, including constitutional institutions and independent offices.

“Phase 2…comprises the migration of county governments to the TSA in the second year (FY 2025-26) in close consultation with Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council,” said the Treasury in the BPS.

The last phase, which will start to be implemented in July next year, will see the migration of all other national government entities to TSA.

In April last year, the Treasury launched the TSA with an audit of the bank accounts held by national and county government entities following the approval of the roll-out of the system in January by the cabinet.

The exercise targeted government ministries, agencies and departments (MDAs) corporations and semi-autonomous government agencies (SAGAs), public funds and projects, county governments, and their entities.

Kenya has opted for a hybrid TSA model that allows entities to maintain separate accounts that are linked to a central account. All funds in these accounts must, however, be transferred to the primary TSA account at the end of each day.

Identifying the number of accounts the entities hold and the money is the first step to operationalizing the TSA, which was mooted a decade ago as one of the solutions to the leakage of public resources.

Although the Treasury promised in budget statements since 2016 to put in place the TSA, it did not take off, revealing the amount of legal and regulatory work required to underpin a successful transfer.

In the financial year starting July, the Treasury projects to collect Sh3.516 trillion in taxes and non-tax revenue, leaving it with a budget deficit of Sh813.9 billion which will be plugged through borrowing.

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