UPDATE: The senate on Thursday, October 8, approved the county cash disbursement schedule hours after President Uhuru Kenyatta signed the County Revenue Allocation Bill into law.
"In exercise of the powers conferred by Section 17 (6) and (7) of the public finance management Act, 2012, the cabinet secretary for the National Treasury and planning in consultation with the intergovernmental budget and economic council and with approval of the Senate, hereby publishes the amounts to county governments in financial year 2020/2021 for the period July, 2020 to June, 2021 with the effect from July 1, 2020," the notice from senate read.
President Uhuru Kenyatta on Thursday, October 8, signed into law the 2020/2021 County Revenue Allocation (CRA) Bill paving the way for the disbursement of exchequer funds to the Counties.
The Bill was presented to the Head of State for signature by Senate Speaker Ken Lusaka at a ceremony attended by his National Assembly counterpart Justin Muturi and Treasury CS Ukur Yattani at State House Nairobi.
In the new law, counties will be allocated a sum of Ksh369.87 billion in the current fiscal year which includes Ksh316.5 billion of equitable share and Ksh13.73 billion in conditional grants from the government.
Also included is Ksh9.43 billion from the road maintenance/fuel levy as well as Ksh30.2 billion in loans and grants.
The conditional allocation will be utilized in provision of services such as leasing of medical equipment and rehabilitation of youth polytechnics across all the 47 counties.
In September 2020, senators unanimously voted to approve the third basis for sharing revenue among counties.
All the 41 senators (delegations) present in the House voted to approve the formula after months of a standoff.
The Third revenue sharing formula has been at the heart of all Senate debates since July 2020, leaving the 47 counties crippled due to lack of funding.
The Council of Governors (CoG) was forced to announce a partial shutdown of the counties, stating that they were no longer capable of running the counties, and blamed their colleagues at the Senate for the delays.
President Uhuru Kenyatta had to intervene on the same issue by convening a meeting at State House. He went on to pledge to add Ksh50 billion to counties in the next financial year.
The formula passed by Senate took into account eight parameters including Basic share at 20%, Population 18%, Health 17%, Poverty Level 14%, Agriculture 10%, Roads 8%, Land 8% and Urban areas 5%.
Nairobi is expected to get the highest increment at Ksh3.3 billion bringing its total allocation to Ksh19 billion, followed by Nakuru County which will gain an extra Ksh2.5 billion to bring its total allocation to Ksh13 billion.
Kiambu County will receive an extra Ksh2.2 billion to raise its allocation to Ksh11.7 billion and Turkana County gets Ksh2 billion extra cash, taking the total to Ksh12 billion.
Since the bill stated that no county would receive less than what had been allocated in the previous financial year, non of the 47 counties would be deemed to have lost.
