Kisumu, Siaya slash funds for agriculture as health takes lion’s share of Kericho budget

Kisumu and Siaya county governments have slashed their budgetary allocations for agriculture.

This is despite the department being fully devolved and dependent on the counties.

The counties cited various achievements as the reason for reducing the allocations.

However, new agricultural projects have been lined up for the 2016/2017 financial year.

Funds allocated to agriculture still remain too low to adequately achieve desired results and make the Nyanza regions food secure.

In Kisumu, the allocation reduced slightly from Sh487 million in the 2015/2016 budget to Sh486.8 million in the next financial year.

Agricultural production and extension services department was allocated Sh80 million, veterinary services (Sh30.4 million), livestock production (Sh40 million) while fisheries got Sh32 million.

Siaya County also cut its agricultural budget by Sh163.5 million.

The allocation for the next accounting year is Sh312.5 million.

The reduction, Governor Cornel Rasanga said, is attributed to achievements such as upgrading of traditional cribs to modern grain stores.

The county intends to spend Sh8.9 million to improvement dairy farming and Sh30 million for the purchase of assorted seeds and fertilizer.

Allocation to Governor Jack Ranguma’s office was increased to Sh656 million.

Meanwhile, the health sector emerged as the biggest winner when Kericho Finance executive Patrick Mutai released the budget estimates for Financial Year 206/2017, taking up almost a quarter of the total budget of Sh6.2 billion.

This was county’s biggest budget since the advent of devolution.

The county assembly was due to debate the budget proposal on Wednesday afternoon.

The health docket was allocated Sh1.598 billion out of which Sh1.374 billion will go towards recurrent expenditure.

Some Sh316.8 million will be used to buy drugs for the various medical facilities in the county.

The remaining Sh115.6 million will go towards development programmes to be started by the department.

Also getting the lion’s share of the budget is the department of roads, public works and transport, which has been allocated Sh881.5 million with the bulk of the funds going towards the development vote.

“For every constructed road, there must be maintenance and as a county, we have to upgrade some identified roads to low volume bituminous standard as an indicator of economic progress. Street lighting project has been allocated Sh17 million,” Mr Mutai said.

The third largest allotment went to the department of education, youth affairs, culture and social services, which was given Sh770.4 million.

Reported by Rushdie Oudia, Nelcon Odhiambo and Timothy Kemei