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City Hall postpones budget with ‘unrealistic figures’


Nairobi County has postponed reading of the budget to next week to give the finance executive more time to fine-tune it.

This comes after the County Assembly’s Budget and Appropriation Committee recommended slashing the budget by Sh2 billion saying that the projected figures were too high.

“According to them it should be fully funded at Sh34 billion but we see it to be over-ambitious. Although there is no deficit on paper, we feel that they are not able to fund the budget fully and therefore need to revise it,” said committee chairman Robert Mbatia after meeting both acting finance executive Charles Kerich and county secretary Peter Kariuki.

Mr Mbatia said that reading of the budget will now take place on Tuesday, June 26.

“We have postponed the pronouncement because it is wise that when they make the pronouncements they quote actual figures.

“They have realised that the figures quoted are not tenable. They must come back with realistic figures,” he said.

He said that with only 10 days to go, the county has been able to raise about Sh8.2 billion in local revenue against their target of Sh17 billion – making their revenue collection projections unrealistic.

“We have aired our concerns especially on the local revenue collection and they have not done much to convince us on how they will raise the revenue,” said the chairman.

Nairobi received Sh15.8 billion from the County Allocation of Revenue Bill 2018 and Sh9 billion from local revenue, the county only raise Sh25 billion.