Revealed: City Hall has spent Sh600m with no projects to show for it
Nairobi County government could have spent more than Sh600 million on ghost development projects in the just ended financial year.
The revelation is contained in a report by the Controller of Budget on county governments budget implementation review for the first half of the 2019/2020 financial year.
DEVELOPMENT EXPENDITURE
According to the report, City Hall could not provide a list of development projects implemented during the period under review despite Sh632.1 million spent as development expenditure in the first six months.
“The total development expenditure of Sh632.1 million represented 5.6 percent of the annual development budget of Sh11.27 billion. The county did not provide a list of development projects that were implemented during the period under review,” read in part the report tabled before Nairobi County Assembly last week.
Interestingly, during the period under review, the county government’s expenditure on domestic travel more than doubled compared to the same period in the financial year ending June 30, 2019.
The report showed that the domestic travel expenditure in the first six months hit Sh337.9 million, an increase of 114.7 percent from Sh157.35 million in the first half of 2018/2019.
REDUCED EXPENDITURE
This comprised of Sh105.5 million spent by the county assembly and Sh232.39 million spent by the county executive.
Put into perspective, the amount is more than half of money City Hall spent on development programmes during the reporting period.
During that period, the county government could only generate Sh3.11 billion in own-source revenue representing a decrease of 620 million from the amount realized during the same period in the financial year ending June 30, 2019.
On a positive note, the county government was able to reduce its expenditure on compensation to employees by 15.6 percent.
This is after only Sh5.92 billion was spent on compensation to employees compared to Sh7 billion spent during a similar period in the 2018/19 financial year.
REVENUE COLLECTION
The remaining part of Sh10.47 billion recurrent programme vote head was spent on operations and maintenance.
Under operations and maintenance, Sh2.5 billion was spent on paying creditors, Sh703.23 million on insurance costs, Sh337.90 million on domestic travel and subsistence, Sh148.36 million on training and hospitality supplies and Sh99.24 million on specialized materials and supplies.
Another Sh93.18 million was spent on utilities supplies, office and services, Sh58.60 million on printing, advertising and services, Sh54.78 million on fuel, oil and lubricants, Sh49.33 million on foreign travel and subsistence and Sh39.81 million on routine maintenance of vehicles.
As a result, Controller of Budget Ms Margaret Nyakang’o wants the County Treasury to formulate and implement strategies to enhance revenue collection; control expenditure on non-core areas in order to release resources for core development programmes and lastly, prepare project implementation status report on a quarterly basis.