According to professor Anyan Nyongo, the County government of Kisumu is facing a financial down-turn after it missed its annual revenue collection target by Ksh 634 million. The County had projected a revenue collection of Ksh 1.4 billion for 2019/2020 financial but only raked in Ksh 804,387,971.
Nyongo made the announcement at the Mama grace Onyango social Hall where he made his third state-of-the-count address. The Governor said that the County has consistently been falling short in its revenue collection for the last six years.
This year’s short-fall follows another short-fall during the 2014/2015 financial year when the County failed to realise a projected Ksh 1.5 billion, gathering instead Ksh 970,903,407. During the financial year 2017/2018, the County targeted Ksh 1.3 billion but once again, only collected Ksh 874 billion was realised.
During the previous year of 2016/2017 financial year, the County’s financial team were depressed because out of a projected Ksh 1.585 billion, only Ksh 1 billion was raised.
Governor Nyongo attributed this year’s revenue short-fall to the Covid-19 pandemic which, he said, had ravaged many businesses. The Governor added that the future was looking bleak because things were not getting better.
Speaking in the presence of Bungoma Governor Wycliffe Wangamati, Kisumu Deputy Governor Mathews Owili and Kisumu speaker Elisha Oraro who all graced the occasion, Governor Nyongo said that his administration was in the process of improving the County’s revenue collection strategies.
He said that top on the agenda was the acquisition of 300 Point of Sale (POS) machines that would be spread across the County to improve revenue collection. He revealed that the County had also recruited 245 revenue officers, added 30,000 additional rate-payers and recruited another 130 enforcement officers to boost revenue collection.
Nyongo said that the county government was battling to pay pending bills totalling to Ksh 2 billion and that si far, the County had paid Ksh 502 million. He disclosed that initially, the pending bills stood at Ksh 5 billion but that after an audit, the figure went down to Ksh 2 billion.
He said that all bills had to be cleared by both the Controller of Budget and the Auditor General. To address the issue of unpaid bills, a Report on a Ksh 1.4 billion Supplementary Budget had been adopted by MCAs to clear bills dating as far back as 2013. Professor Nyongo said that no bill will be paid without approval.
The County mainly collects revenue from rents, rates, parking fees, cess, market fees and boda boda charges. Before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, collection from these sources raised Sh416 million.
