The Senate and the National Assembly have once again disagreed over the amount of money counties should receive from the national government in the 2017/18 financial budget.
This is after the Senate unanimously adopted a report by finance committee chaired by Billow Kerrow (Mandera) proposing that money allocated by counties be increased by Sh 29 billion.
The House adopted a proposal that the county equitable share allocation be raised to Shs 314 billion as opposed to Shs 291 billion passed by the National Assembly.
The Senate further adopted a recommendation that conditional allocation be increased to Shs 38 billion which includes additional conditional allocations from loans and grants amounting to Shs 5.5 billion.
In total the Senators want county allocation for the financial year 2017/2018 amounting to shs 352 billion. The amended bill will now be sent to the National assembly and if the latter rejects the changes, the process will proceed to mediation.
The constitution demands that whenever the two Houses disagree on a bill, a team consisting of members from both Houses is formed to iron out the issues of contention. This will delay the disbursement of funds to counties.
Kerrow’s committee said it arrived at the decision after holding deliberations with the National Treasury, Council of Governors (CoG) and Commission on Revenue Allocation(CRA) in conjunction with the submissions received during the public hearing.
