Counties too broke to house staff

By Peter Muiruri

The Parliament Budget Office has released a report with grim statistics showing the inability of many counties in raising required funds to run the devolved governments.

This will further compound the ability of county governments to provide adequate housing and office facilities for their staff.

The report dubbed MP’s Budget Watch seeks to provide objective information and analysis on the national budget and overall state of the entire economy.

Appendix 6 of the report with the sub-title County Revenue and Cost of Devolved Functions outlines the current revenue collected by each of the 47 counties measured against the cost of their anticipated functions.

Nairobi is the highest ranked county that has a current ability to raise close to Sh7 billion against a budget of 13 billion in the devolved status. It should be borne in mind that Nairobi has an elaborate infrastructure system that needs little touch up. In addition, the city will continue to be on the country’s radar owing to its status as the nation’s capital.

On the other hand, the report ranks Tana River as the poorest county that can only raise about Sh 25 million against an expected devolved budget of Sh1.7 billion.

To complicate matters further is the fact that a huge chunk of the country’s finances will be eaten up by the huge wage bill occasioned by the transition to county governments. As an example, out of the 1.46 trillion budget for the 2012/13 financial year, 1.01 trillion will fund recurrent expenditure leaving a partly 453 billion shillings for development projects.

Kenya’s budget is one of the most inflexible with little room to incorporate unexpected projects.

“Excluding essential spending on wages and salaries, Kenya’s budget is relatively inflexible and there is not much room for deep spending cuts or austerity measures,” says the report.

The import of this is quite telling: embarking on massive construction of the unbudgeted housing projects will be way beyond what majority of counties can take.