Senators and MPs have failed to come to an agreement on the division of revenue bill that touches on the allocation of funds to counties. This happened a few hours to the reading of the national budget by the Treasury CS Henry Rotich.
Reports indicate that some senators threatened to block the reading of the national budget by the CS following the collapsed talks.
The Mediation Committee members, who met earlier today to meet and reconcile their differences, walked out of the parliament buildings without a conclusive agreement on the bill.
The senators had proposed a total of Ksh327 Billion county allocations in the 2019/2020 budget but the Budget and Appropriations Committee of the National Assembly was advocating for Ksh316 Billion.
The two houses have been at loggerheads over the past few weeks over the Ksh9 Billion difference.
Speaking during Citizen TV's JKLive, Senator Sakaja and Mutula Kilonzo Jr emphasized the need for the two houses to agree at the meeting.
"We cannot afford to disagree, otherwise we will hit a stalemate and the bill will be lost," Sakaja remarked.
The division of revenue battle came after the Senators blamed the members of the National Assembly for taking away Ksh500 million that had been given to them for county oversight functions.
The committee proposed to take away the money from the Parliamentary Service Commission vote under Senate affairs program for county oversight monitoring and evaluation, according to the report tabled by committee chair Kimani Ichung’wa (Kikuyu).
The money was instead reallocated to other priority areas, sending senators back to the drawing board in their quest to manage a kitty similar to the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) enjoyed by their National Assembly counterparts.
Senators wanted the money, arguing it was key in the monitoring of programs initiated by governors and Members of County Assemblies at the grassroots.
CS Rotich is set to table the budget at the National Assembly despite the two houses failing to agree on the bill that has created a great rift in the past month.
Majority Leader of the National Assembly, Aden Duale, spoke on the stalemate and stated that the budget reading would still proceed as planned.
"The CS (Rotich) will still read the budget and he will give an overdraft to the counties to run their activities until the two houses meet to discuss the division of revenue bill. There is no crisis," Duale affirmed.
