Nairobi’s Milimani courts top collection as Judiciary revenue climbs to Sh2bn

The Judiciary’s revenue collection, mainly earned from court fees, fines and forfeitures rose by 5.2 percent to Sh2.1 billion on improved cash collection methods, though it fell below estimates.

The improved collection, covering 12 months to June last year, followed the Judiciary’s implementation of a policy on non-collection of cash.

Instead, all court stations were directed to use cashless systems, mainly direct banking, M-Pesa and agency banking.

“These avenues have minimised the risks associated with the handling of cash and boosted revenue collections and accountability--- the increase was as a result of improved cash collection methods,” says the Judiciary in the annual report for 2017/2018 period.

It adds that the revenue control measures were tightened and enhanced to cap revenue leakages within the Judiciary.

“The Judiciary introduced a revenue sweeping policy whereby revenue collected by court stations across the country is auto-transferred to the main revenue collection account every month to minimise the amount of revenue held by court stations,” the report says.

The money collected is about 71 percent of the Sh3 billion that the Judiciary had targeted although there was an actual increase in the amount netted.

In the previous year, it had targeted Sh1.97 billion but surpassed this to hit Sh2.1 billion.

National government

The Judiciary receives revenue on behalf of the national government.

This is paid directly into the Treasury as per the 2010 resolution by Parliament requiring that all court fees and other appropriations-in-aid received by the Judiciary be transferred directly to the Treasury.

During the period, fees grew by 13 percent from Sh847 million to Sh954 million. This growth was attributed to increase in filed cases.

There were additional cases handled in the period under review leading to this growth, according to the Judiciary.

“The comparative growth in fees could be attributed to increase in filed cases from 344,180 filed in the financial year 2016/2017 to 402,243 cases filed in 2017/2018,” said the Judiciary.

In addition, there was an increase in the number of cases resolved from 88 per cent in 2016/17 to 92 per cent during the review period.

However, fines, which form the bulk of Judiciary revenue, dropped by about one per cent to Sh1.123 billion from previous years’ Sh1.125 billion.

“The slight decline in fines was due to various factors, including refund of fines upon successful appeals,” said the Judiciary.

In 12 months to June 2018 alone, out of 402,243 criminal and civil cases filed in the Judiciary, 370,488 were resolved.

Milimani Law Courts and its sister court, Milimani Commercial Court were the biggest contributors to the revenue basket, with Sh245.59 million and Sh206.6 million respectively.

They were followed by Mombasa court and Kibera court with Sh95.6 million and Sh69.4 million in that order.

Revenue generators

Other top 10 revenue generators were Mavoko, Eldoret, Thika, Machakos, Naivasha and Nakuru, pointing to the beehive of activities in courts located in most major towns and cities.

But on court fines alone, Milimani Law court, Kibera and Makadara lead with Sh129.8 million, Sh68.7 million and Sh43.5 million respectively.

To improve transparency, the Judiciary rolled out automated financial system in all court stations.

The system, according to Judiciary, aided in revenue, deposits and expenditure management and reduced losses caused by weak systems in courts.

In addition, it implemented Q-pay services in 59 court stations which is an on-line payment platform provided by Kenya Commercial Bank.

The Judiciary is making strides in digitisation of most court processes such as use of case tracking system (CTS) for automation of registry processes, court recording transcription system for digitisation of proceeding and e-filing of court files.

This is expected to cut case backlogs and may result in more revenues.
Total cumulative pending cases rose by four per cent from the 533,350 cases at the end of 2016/17 financial to 553,187. When resolved, they may also generate more money.