Thursday, March 28, 2024

The government is broke, says CS Rotich

The government of Kenya is broke and facing serious difficulties in financing some of its development projects.

This has been revealed by the cabinet secretary for the National Treasury Henry Rotich. While appearing before a Senate committee, the CS further revealed that the government would be slashing billions of cash allocated to counties.

He blamed the financial difficulties on the Kenya Revenue Authority which he said had failed to meet the targeted revenue collections.

“We have discussed with the KRA on how to catch up by tightening the tax net on the domestic and customs revenue,” Mr Rotich said. In the current financial year, Sh.302 billion was allocated to the 47 county governments in equitable share of revenue collected, meaning that at the worst case scenario, the allocation could reduce to Sh.285 billion.

The billions allocated to counties will be slashed by between Sh.15 billion and Sh.17 billion.

However, Mutula Kilonzo, the Senator for Makueni County asked the CS to admit that the government was broke. “Just tell us that the government is broke! Otherwise this thing you are telling us about reduction of the counties allocation is something that we can’t sell. It is impossible to do that midway through another budget making process,” Mr Kilonzo said.

 

Connect With Us

320,550FansLike
14,108FollowersFollow
8,436FollowersFollow
1,880SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Stories

Related Stories