President Uhuru Kenyatta, on Tuesday, September 17, signed the Division of Revenue Bill 2019 into law with the most significant figure being the Ksh378 billion allocated to governors.
This comes amidst a protracted battle between the county bosses and the Executive with the former demanding an increase from Ksh316 billion to Ksh335 billion but the president had declined to budge at some point even lashing out that the national government was not a 'money-printing factory'.
So dire was the battle that it paralysed services across several counties including West Pokot, Kilifi, Kisumu, Samburu, Homa Bay, Kitui and Laikipia.
The 47 counties will receive Ksh316.5 billion as their equitable share of national revenue while the additional Sh61.6 billion constitutes conditional allocations to the devolved units.
Speaking to Kenyans.co.ke, the Council of Governors communications officer Ruth Chitwa explained that the conditional allocations represented grants from development partners like the World Bank and Donata.
The president is bound by the constitution to leave room for the conditional allocations for specified projects within the county.
For instance, in the 2018/2019, conditional allocations from national government revenue were allocated to each county government for services like construction of headquarters and level 5 hospitals.
While signing the bill, Uhuru urged the county governments to come up with better systems of collecting and managing their own revenue.
Present during the signing of the Bill were acting Treasury CS Ukur Yattani, Devolution CS Eugene Wamalwa, Speaker of the National Assembly Justin Muturi, Attorney General Paul Kihara Kariuki and Treasury PS Julius Muia among others.
