The government has set a new record in eCitizen revenue collection months after President William Ruto directed the use of a single pay bill number and digitisation of all government services.
In a statement dated December 21, Immigration and Citizen Services PS Julius Bitok noted that the daily revenue collection on the digital platform crossed Ksh900 million for the first time.
The PS revealed that eCitizen collected a total of Ksh903.6 million, Ksh223,714,916 ($1,446,495) of which was collected in dollars on Wednesday, December 20.
The figure marks a steady rise in monies collected through the platform following Ruto's directive to all state agencies to onboard all their services on the eCitizen platform by the end of this year.
The President had also directed that all other pay bill numbers be deactivated and all payments channelled through a consolidated pay bill, 222222.
Bitok further revealed that since the directives were made, roughly 14,000 services have been onboarded onto the digital platform.
The development later saw the collected revenue increase to an average of Ksh300 million per day last month.
"Data from Treasury reveals in November, Ksh4.664 billion was collected up from Ksh1.44 billion in June before the presidential directive. The amounts for July, August and September were Ksh2.362 billion, Ksh3.636 billion and Ksh4,233 billion respectively," read the statement in part.
"The government is banking on an average of 5,000 new users who sign up to eCitizen daily in addition to the 11 million eCitizen existing users alongside the onboarding of more services to further increase its daily revenue collection."
Ruto converged all the pay bills used by the state agencies in June this year in an attempt to realign financial management to ensure efficiency and reduce corruption tendencies fostered by physical interactions in government offices.
"We must shut down the rest of the Pay Bill Numbers and remain only with one to channel all the money to the government through Treasury," Ruto stated at the time.
At the time, the state projected to collect Ksh350 billion from service fees and other charges by the end of 2022.
Shortly after, however, the directive caused unease among financial thinkers including Auditor General Nancy Gathungu who cautioned that billions would be at risk of theft.
"I have already raised some concerns with the treasury about internal controls. If we decide to put all our eggs in one basket, we must be sure that we have plugged all the loopholes in revenue collection," Gachungu told a Parliamentary sitting in September.
