Governor tells KRA to keep off county revenues

Laikipia Governor Ndiritu Muriithi has accused the national government of interfering with revenue collection in the county contrary to the law.

He said the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) continued to collect catering levy for local restaurants in Laikipia despite the fact that business licences are issued by the county.

"The Constitution is straight forward that the licensing and control of establishments that sell food to the public (restaurants) is a county function. We take the early opportunity to remind the KRA that when they collect the catering levy, they should be submitting it to counties," Mr Muriithi said from his Nanyuki office Monday.

He added: "Since they have always offered to assist counties to collect taxes, then frankly, they should do the correct thing without having to resort to dragging each other to court. They should be submitting that particular levy to counties because it is a county function,"

The governor further also took issue with the Ministry of Health for allegedly trying to license county health facilities contrary to the Law.

"We have seen the Ministry of Health issuing a very strange circular purporting license county health facilities yet there is no law that allows that national government to do so. We want to remind them to do their work and allow us to do ours for the best interests of Kenyans," he said.

The county failed to achieve its target of Sh1 billion local revenue in the financial year 2019/2020 and experienced an 11 percent shortfall of its previous year's collection.

County Revenue Board chief executive officer Prudence Waithera said Sh727.9 million was collected compared to Sh815 million collected in 2018/2019 financial year.

Ms Waithera said their performance was good in the first half of 2019/2020 financial year, but it was disrupted in the second half by the Covid-19 pandemic.