Mt Kenya region counties witness drop in revenue collection

Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo

NYERI, KENYA: Controller of Budget Agnes Odiambo’s latest report on the implementation of budgets for the 2017/18 financial year has pointed to an overall decline in revenue collected by counties in Mt Kenya Region.

The nine month county budget implementation report noted out of six counties in Mt Kenya region, only Nyeri increased its revenue by 0.8 percent and also met 49 percent of its targeted revenue.

Nyeri County has planned to collect Sh 1billion in local revenue and in nine months it had collected Sh 499 million.

“This is an increase compared to Sh 495 million collected during a similar period last financial year 2016/17,” the report noted.

Kiambu County collected Sh1.16 billion which was 36 percent of its targeted revenue of Sh2.2 billion.

“This is however a decline of 27 percent compared to the amount collected previous year of Sh 1.61 billion,”Ms Odhiambo noted.

Embu County collected Sh 253 million which is also a 16 percent decline from what was collected last year which was Sh303 million.

“Embu County targeted Sh653 million from own sources revenue and collected 38 percent of this target in the reporting period,” The report noted.

Kirinyaga, Muranga and Kiambu counties also registered a decline in revenues collected in the nine months compared to a similar period the previous years.

Kirinyaga collected Sh206 million, which was a decline of 18percent, compared to Sh253 million to the first nine months of 2016/17.

Muranga collected Sh 282 million while Meru collected 302 million from own sources within their counties.

The Report also identified under-performance in collection of own-source revenue as one of the challenges which hampered effective budget execution during the nine months.