Devolved Units have been put on the limelight for derailing development by using 60% of their budgets on recurrent expenditure which mainly involves payment of salaries and wages.
In a span of 6 months 21 county governments spent less than 10% of their revenue on development projects.
The details were released in the latest budget implementation review report for the first half of the 2023-24 financial year between July 1 and October 31, 2023.
The Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o revealed details of how Kisii, Nairobi, Machakos, West Pokot and Nyandarua absorbed the least percentage of their budgets at 2.9%, 3.3%, 3.5%, 8.7% and 7.0% respectively on development.
“The development expenditure during the period under review amounted to Sh24.81 billion translating to an absorption rate of 12.2% of the annual FY 2023-24 development budget of KSh203.11 billion,” the report read.
Others are Nyeri at 6.4%, Samburu at 5.2%, Taita Taveta at 4.4%, Makueni at 7.1%, Meru at 9.8% and Kericho at 7.6%.
Baringo spent 5.8%, Lamu at 7.5%, Isiolo at 9.7% and Kajiado at 8.7%.
On the other hand, Narok, Bomet, Uasin Gishu, Laikipia and Marsabit Counties had the highest absorption rates of their respective approved development budgets at 52.4%, 27.1%, 27.0%, 22.5% and 21.7% respectively.
The report highlighted the ballooning wage bill in the devolved units, the counties spent KSh98.13 billion or 58% of their revenues on personnel emoluments.
Nairobi spent the highest amount of their budgets on personnel emolument. The county spent KSh7.49 billion of their total expenditure of KSh10.81 billion on personnel emolument.
Nakuru spent KSh3.63 billion on personnel emolument followed by Machakos (KSh3.3 billion), Turkana (KSh3.03 billion), Kitui (KSh2.96 billion), Baringo (KSh3.83 billion) and Kiambu (KSh3.68 billion).
“The Control of Budget recommends that County Governments should ensure that expenditure on personnel emoluments is contained at sustainable levels and in compliance with Regulation 25 (1) (b) of the Public Finance Management (County Governments) Regulations, 2015,” the report states.
“Further, the County Public Service Boards are advised to fast-track the acquisition of Unifed Personnel Numbers for their staff and ensure payroll is processed through the prescribed Government system,” it adds.
The report shows that KSh7.06 billion of the payrolls was processed manually and outside the government payroll system which accounts for 7% of the total wage bills.
“This contradicts the Government policy that requires salaries to be processed through the IPPD system. The manual payroll is prone to abuse and may lead to the loss of public funds where there is a lack of proper controls,” Nyakang’o said.
