President Uhuru signs law on county cash

President Uhuru Kenyatta on Thursday assented to an Act setting out the equitable share of the national revenue for each of the 47 counties.

The County Allocation of Revenue Act 2017 specifies what each county will get on the basis of the revenue sharing formula approved by Parliament.

It also sets out details of conditional allocations from the national government to each county government for the 2017/2018 financial year.

The conditional allocations that the national government gives to counties include:

-conditional grants for level 5 hospitals.

-special purpose grants supporting construction of county headquarters.

-conditional allocations for development of youth polytechnics.

-conditional allocations to compensate county health facilities for forgone user fees.

-conditional allocations for leasing of medical equipment.

- Conditional allocations from the Road Maintenance Fuel Levy Fund, for the repair and maintenance of county roads.

 The Act also provides a budget ceiling on recurrent expenditure for counties.

It sets out the limits of recurrent expenditure for county assemblies and county executives in each of the counties.

Nairobi County gets the highest limit with Sh1.2 billion for the County Assembly and Sh738 million for the County Executive.

The President also signed another Act to make further provisions on the County Assembly Service Board and the County Assembly Service as established under the County Governments Act.

The Act provides a framework for the establishment of effective operation of the County Assembly Service with respect to each county.

It also provides the procedure for the appointment of members of the board and procedural functions of the Clerk.