County governments have their eyes on President William Ruto who now holds the key to disbursement of additional funds to devolved units.
The County Government’s Additional Allocations Bill (National Assembly Bill No. 23 of 2023) has been forwarded to the President for assent.
The Bill seeks to provide for the additional allocations to county governments for the Financial Year 2023/2024.
The Bill provides a total additional allocation of Sh46,362,301,459 to counties for the FY 2023/24, divided into four allocations.
“Out of the total additional allocations of Sh46,362,301,459 to counties, the additional allocations from the national government’s share of revenue is Sh10,116,848,690,” according to the Bill.
The Sh10,116,848,690 will go towards the provision of subsidy fertiliser, promotion of the Bottom-up Economic Transformation Agenda through the County Aggregated Industrial Parks Programme, construction of county headquarters and provision of library services.
Out of the total additional allocations for the financial year 2023/2024, county governments shall also benefit from unconditional allocations from Court fines and Mineral Royalties amounting to Sh3,043,584,126.
The allocation is geared towards the enhancement of county governments’ Own-source Revenue, from the share of mineral royalties to county governments and court fines levied by the national government from contravention of county legislation.
Further, the Bill grants conditional allocations from proceeds of loans and grants from development partners totalling Sh29,072,606,661 for the implementation of several key projects.
The projects include IDA-(World Bank) credit-National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth Project–NARIGP-(Sh410 million), IDA-(World Bank) credit National Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (Sh6.6 million), Water and Sanitation Development Project (Sh5.35 billion), Primary Health Care in Devolved Context (Sh577.5 million) and County Climate Institutional Support (CCIS) Grant (Sh517 million).
Others are the Agricultural Sector Development Support Programme (Sh72.7 million), the Drought Resilience Programme in Northern Kenya (ShSh765 million), Emergency Locust Response Project (Sh2.3 billion), Kenya Informal Settlement Improvement Project (Sh4.5 billion), Kenya Livestock Commercialisation Project (Sh344.3 million), (xi) Aquaculture Business Development Project (Sh245 million), Credit (Financing Locally- Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) Programme (Sh6.18 billion) and Loan for Financing Locally- Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) Program County Climate Change Resilience Grant (Sh1.2 billion).
The allocations will mainly be towards agriculture, health care, water and climate change interventions.
The Bill was published on May 24, 2023, and read for the first time on June 6, 2023. The Bill is sponsored by the Chairperson, of the Budget and Appropriations Committee, Ndindi Nyoro.
It was introduced in the National Assembly on June 6, 2023, and passed on June 27, 2023, without amendments.
Thereafter, the Bill was forwarded to the Senate, which considered and passed it on October 12 2023, with amendments and referred it back to the National Assembly for consideration.
The National Assembly considered and rejected the Senate’s amendments on November 23, 2023, which essentially committed the Bill to a Mediation Committee.
The Mediation Committee agreed on a version of the County Government Additional Allocations (National Assembly Bill No. 23 of 2023) which they proposed to both Houses of Parliament for passage.
