Counties miss Sh61b revenue target

All 47 counties missed a total revenue target of Sh61 billion to supplement their budgets, raising only Sh19 billion.

Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo said counties failed to achieve a target of 75 per cent of the annual target by March 2014.

“Most counties were unable to collect revenue to supplement what the national government allocates them. We are currently trying to compare figures by former Local Government Authorities to find out how they used to perform before the coming into place of the counties,” Ms Odhiambo explained in her report.

The information is in the Progress Report on Revenue and Expenditure for County Governments covering the nine months from July 2013 to March 2014.

However, despite failure by counties to raise revenue, a number of counties were singled out for better performance.

Nairobi County raised the highest among the 47 counties, managing Sh7.8 billion. Second was Mombasa followed by Narok, Nakuru and Kiambu that raised Sh1.4 billion, Sh1.3 billion, Sh1.2 billion and Sh869.5 million respectively.

Lamu registered the lowest revenue collection of Sh18.8 million behind Tana River and Garissa counties which collected Sh24.3 million and Sh27.4 million respectively.

Local revenue collection as a proportion of the annual target places West Pokot ahead of the pack, achieving the highest in the country of its annual target at 77.3 per cent.

Homa Bay and Samburu counties closed in with 70.3 per cent and 70.1 per cent of their targets respectively.

Kakamega achieved the lowest revenue as a proportion of the annual local revenue target at 4.3 per cent.

Other counties that performed dismally include Bungoma (5.1 per cent) and Embu (13.2 per cent).

A total of 10 counties’ revenue fell below 20 per cent of their annual targets.

The poor performance of counties after one year in office now raises the red flag.

“Failure by counties to appoint receivers of revenue as required by the Public Finance management Act 2012 is one of the reasons for failure to collect revenue,” Ms Odhiambo said.

Despite the challenges, there was significant improvement in local revenue collection during the third quarter of the financial year, where Sh9.9 billion was raised compared to Sh4.5 billion and Sh4.7 billion raised in the first and second quarters respectively.

The increase in the third quarter was attributed to the renewal of Single Business Permits (SBP) between January and March this year.