Nyandarua county has more than doubled its development budget to Sh2 billion, widening its budget gap that could see it increase local taxes. The development fund is an increase from Sh900 million in 2017.
In the current financial year, the county plans to collect Sh630 million up from Sh400 million collected in the last financial year.
In the 2022/23 financial year, the county plans to spend Sh6.8 billion in total, out of which Sh4.7billion (69.96 percent) will go towards the recurrent expenditure while Sh2 billion, which is about 31 percent of the total budget is directed towards development expenditure.
The county will rely heavily on donor funding, goodwill from the national government, and other development partners to complete expensive flagship projects.
Finance executive member Stephen Njoroge said the increased target on county revenue collection does not automatically mean increased taxation to the traders, but the treasury will focus more on streamlining revenue collection.
“The Ol Kalou Municipality and other towns have tremendously grown in the last three years, we have more investors and traders than we had before, the growth is due to a conducive environment created by the government, and our main focus is to streamline revenue collection from this remarkable growth, this will be done through policy formulation but without burdening our traders and investors,” said Dr Njoroge.
He says most of the ongoing flagship projects are national government and donor-funded due to intensive lobbying.
“We have enjoyed a good working relationship with the national government and goodwill from the donor community,” said Dr Njoroge.
