Garissa County passes Sh7.5bn budget after 3-month delay

Garissa County Assembly on Thursday evening unanimously passed Sh7.5 billion budget they rejected three months ago after the executive addressed contentious subjects.

While presenting the committee report on budget and appropriation in the house, committee chairman Mr Abdirahman Mohamed Idriss said the executive has addressed all issues raised during the rejection of previous budget and resubmitted documents to the assembly.

He told the House that documents such as revised annual development plan, a memorandum explaining the deviation from the approved county fiscal strategy 2016 and debt management strategy paper, which clearly details the county pending bills, have now been submitted.

The committee chairman shocked the House when he revealed that the county government has huge accumulated unpaid debt of about Sh2.7 billion because the county government has failed to meet its financial obligations.

“The county failed its revenue collection targets over the last three financial years and disbursement from exchequer has been piecemeal.

"This made the county government fail in meeting its financial obligations to service providers and contractors, said Mr Idriss, who is also the Goryale Ward Representative.

He said the county government has set aside sh2.739 billion for payment of the pending bills.

The MCAs rejected the budget estimates in June because the executive did not adhere to a ceiling adopted by the assembly.

The budget targets also deviated from programmes and annual development plan.

DEBT LEVEL
“The county treasury did not verify the debt level of the county and didn’t submit to the county assembly for approval the debt strategy paper in line with article 123 of Public Finance Management Act 2012,” said the budget and appropriation committee chairman.

While supporting the passage of the budget, Minority Leader of the House Mr Nasir Mohamed said the executive has tried to provide all the answers they wanted but had not indicated the specific projects that has not been paid for.

“Mr Speaker we appreciate the county government for owning up their earlier fault where they have not indicated total debt, as a house we will now have to fast-track to ensure all the service providers of the county have been paid,” he told the House.

It’s a sigh of relief for contractors who have done work for the county as early 2013 but have not been paid.