Tana River revenue collection falls 53pc

Tana River County revenue has fallen by more than 53 per cent in the first nine months of the 2017/2018 fiscal year.

In the just released County Governments' Budget Implementation Review Report, Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo says the county fell short of its Sh30 million target, only collecting Sh16.19 million.

At the same time, Mrs Odhiambo says in the report that the county spent a paltry Sh283.78 million of the Sh2.04 billion released to the County Revenue Fund (CRF) on development expenditure with the rest going to personal emoluments (Sh1 billion) and operations (Sh819.5 million).

“Expenditure on personnel emoluments represented an increase of 10.5 per cent compared to the first nine months of FY 2016/17 when the county spent Sh908 million, and was 49.3 per cent of total expenditure in the first nine months of FY 2017/18,” she says.

Late approval

The low exchequer releases could be attributed to the fact that the budget estimates of Sh5.8 billion for that financial year was approved by the local county assembly toward the end of 2017, making it impossible for the exchequer to release development funds in the first six months of the financial year.

“By the end of the financial year on June 30, the Exchequer had not released disbursements for May and June,” said Finance Chief Matthew Babwoya says.

Of the remaining amount, about Sh900 million is expected to settle pending bills amounting to Sh1.7 billion the current administration inherited from their predecessor.

The late disbursements may have to go through another supplementary budget process as the last one lapsed with the end of the financial year.

Tana River County chiefs have been reviewing the annual budget over the past five financial years from Sh120 million in the 2013/2014 financial year to Sh30 million in the last financial year, but have never met any of the targets set.

In early February, Governor Dhadho Godhana vowed to seal all revenue leakages with a view to enhancing tax collection by replacing all corrupt revenue officers, whom he blamed for the leakage of collected levy.

Revenue streams

He lamented that since the onset of devolution, the county had not managed to raise the annual Sh40 million that the defunct County Council of Tana River used to collect despite the county government having opened more revenue streams.

“I would like to send a warning to all revenue officers that I may be forced to sack them and replace them with those who will help us move on with our development agenda,” he said then.

The highest amount of revenue collected by the county government since devolution is Sh33 million (2014/2015 financial year).

Governor Godhana believes that some of the monies collected go to the individual pockets of corrupt revenue officers, hence reason for introducing automation as a mode of revenue collection.

Meanwhile, Lamu and Mandera Counties collected Sh41.49 million and Sh46.97 million respectively during the period, as Nairobi, Mombasa and Narok led the list of counties that have so far made a slight improvement by collecting Sh7.64 billion, Sh1.68 billion and Sh1.63 billion respectively.