Treasury to keep keen eye on how counties spend their cash
National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich (right) fields questions from senators’ joint Finance and Devolution Committee on Tuesday at the KICC in Nairobi. Photo/JENNIFER MUIRURI
The Treasury will retain a tight hold of county purse strings until proper infrastructure and systems are in place to efficiently manage funds from the national government.
According to a Treasury official, who spoke to Daily Nation on condition of anonymity, the national treasury will disburse the Sh210 billion allocated to counties quarterly in order to track how the money is spent.
Further, the National Treasury will only issue the money to the counties when they submit programme-based budgets.
This comes even as the Budget Controller Agnes Odhiambo warns that the national government needs to keep a keen eye on county spending.
In a recent report assessing the implementation of the 2012/2013 budget in the nine months to March 2013, Ms Odhiambo called for “a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework” to be put in place to “ensure close supervision of projects at county level”.
She also urged the county governments to speed up the implementation of checks and balances needed to ensure that money allocated to them is appropriately spend.
“There is no adequate infrastructure and human capacity to rationalise the integrated financial management information system needed to track expenditure at the counties,” she said.
Closer scrutiny from the Treasury may lead to protest among county government officials who have begun complaining that the national government will stifle devolution through extensive control.
Financial autonomy
Meru governor Peter Munya, has complained that the about the integrated financial management information software at the Finance ministry, which is used to control and monitor spending in the ministries, is being exported to counties.
“This ideally means that counties will not have the financial autonomy to conduct their affairs by having to plug into the treasury’s financial system whenever they want to access funds instead of being given their money directly,” said Mr Munya.
“This system was designed for a centralised system, how will it ensure the independence of the counties? What is even the constitutionality of this system?” he asked.
Turkana governor Josphat Nanok has also expressed pessimism that it would work in areas that do not have internet such as his county headquarters.
