The National Treasury has said counties are to blame for any pending bills within their jurisdictions.
Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich yesterday said for three years up to June, the national government had cleared all disbursements to county governments.
“We do not understand why counties are not able to settle their bills because we have disbursed all the money that they were supposed to receive from 2013,” said Rotich.
Appearing before the Senate committee on Public Accounts and Investments, the CS said most of the counties crying foul may have been living beyond their means.
He told the Prof Anyang’ Ny’ongo-led committee that despite instances where National Treasury releases the money late, at the close of every year, every county gets full disbursement.
“If counties do not get their revenue projections correctly, then certainly, they will enter into commitments beyond them. The shortfall in revenue would lead to pending bills,” said Mr Rotich.
He, however, exonerated Nairobi and Mombasa from blame, telling the committee that they finance their expenditure up to 50 per cent, with the remainder coming from the national government.
Mr Rotich said other counties should assess their ability to meet their own revenue projections before entering into commitments since over 95 per cent of their expenditure is financed by the national government.
This is despite Prof Nyong’o telling the CS that Uasin Gishu and Nakuru counties had also joined Nairobi in blaming Treasury for pending bills.
The committee told Treasury most complaints revolved around late disbursements.
However, the CS insisted even with cases of delayed disbursement on a monthly basis, by end of the year, counties should have cleared all their bills since there are no pending disbursements.
UNCOLLECTED LAND RATES
He said his office had received cases where some of the revenue collected by counties is spent at source instead of being put in the county revenue fund first.
This, he said, had opened loopholes for wastage. Already, Nairobi County has submitted a petition to the committee, complaining about outstanding bills.
Governor Evans Kidero has said in the petition the bills run into billions of shillings. Mr Rotich said lack of clear records and sometimes failure by the county to bill respective ministries for land rates and utilities was to blame for the problem.
“Counties have not been able to bill the national government on time. For example, the County Government of Nairobi had never billed National Treasury on the use of its building since 1999,” he told the committee.
Treasury has now entered into agreement with Nairobi County to be given a breakdown on the amount each ministry owes.
