By VITALIS KIMUTAI
Treasury was last evening expected to forward this year’s budgetary allocations – the first one under President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government - to Parliament to beat the constitutional dateline.
The estimates are expected to be tabled in Parliament Thursday afternoon when it resumes its session after adjourning for Labour Day.
Parliament, however, cannot start sifting through the budgetary and appropriation documents, as the Budget Appropriation Committee has not been constituted.
The law requires that the financial estimates be forwarded to Parliament latest April 30. Unlike in the previous years when Finance ministers tabled the budget estimates in Parliament in June, the new laws require the Cabinet Secretary Finance to table the estimates before the Budget committee. Mr Aden Duale, the Leader of Majority at the National Assembly, said that the budgetary allocation was expected to be forwarded to Parliament to meet legal requirements.
“As you are all aware, the March 10 requirement could not be met because Parliament had not started its sessions,” Duale said. Duale told Prliament that the county governments under the devolved units had also not been formed.
“Currently, the county governments are putting in place the capital and human infrastructure to enable them operate within the law,” Duale said.
He said the budgetary estimates must conform with the allocations ratio to counties as given by the Revenue Allocation Commission chaired by former Central Bank of Kenya Governor Micah Cheserem.
Gwasi MP John Mbadi reminded the House that the law requires that the two Bills should be introduced in Parliament before March 10.
