Members of the National Assembly’s Trade Committee on Tuesday accused Treasury Ministry, now headed by John Mbadi, of sabotaging key development projects across the country.....CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE>>>
Speaking when they met senior officials from the Treasury, the MPs from the Departmental Committee on Trade, Industry and Cooperatives took a dig at the officials for failing to release the appropriated funds to State Departments.
The committee led by Embakasi North MP John Gakuya, who is allied to the ruling United Democratic Alliance (UDA), particularly pointed to the industrialisation and manufacturing sector as the biggest casualties.
“Our biggest concern as a committee is that the National Treasury has decided to kill industrialisation and the manufacturing sector by starving the state departments of funds,” argued Gakuya.
Aldai MP Marianne Kitany (who is also in UDA), questioned the Treasury team in particular on why they denied state departments and their agencies development funds despite them being critical in the generation of revenue in the country at a time when the government is struggling to raise money.
“For the government to collect more revenue in the key sectors of the economy, it has to invest funds to spur growth in the various sectors. How do you project to get revenue when you are not investing?” Inquired Kitany.
The blame game came at a time when the fate of key projects remained unknown due to the Treasury’s failure to release allocated funds as per the budget provisions.
Among the projects include the construction of six Export Promotion Zones (EPZ) that were allocated Ksh500 million each in the last financial year totaling to Ksh3 billion.
According to data from the Treasury, only Ksh300 million has been released to the projects after a directive by President William Ruto.
The MPs also questioned why the Ksh3.5 billion for the Coffee Cherry Fund had not been released, despite Parliament allocating Ksh4 billion in the financial year 2023/24 budget.
The Treasury was also faulted by the team for failure to release Ksh350 million meant for the modernisation of Kenya Planters Cooperative Union (KPCU) warehouses despite an allocation by the National Assembly in the Supplementary Budget II for the fiscal year 2023/2024.
The Treasury Officials, led by Benard Ndungu (the Director General in charge of Accounting Services), responded by stating that the delays were occasioned by the shortfall in revenue and scarcity of money resources that was occasioned by debts borrowed by Kenya.
“Due to the shortfall of revenue and scarcity of cash resources, the National Treasury usually applies for administrative criteria by giving priority to public debt,’’ Ndungu told the lawmakers.
Treasury also revealed that the government faced the problem of giving priority to recurrent expenditures and, therefore, that informed their decision not to release money to the affected key projects.
“Security, salaries, counties, social programs such as education, health, development and flagship projects among others equally require administrative priorities,” Mr Ndungu added.
The Treasury cited the lack of funds was to be blamed for the standoff revealing that a total of Ksh 218.5 billion was not released to five state agencies under the Ministry of Cooperatives and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs)….CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ARTICLE>>>
