It is a scandal that in the second and third years of devolution only 10 counties out of the 47 reached the targeted 30 per cent threshold for development spending (see page 10).
The Kenya Economic Report 2016 says the county budget allocation on recurrent spending was 62 per cent and 38 per cent for development in 2014-15. Only 22 per cent was spent on development by the end of 2015.
The devolution project will fail if the counties continue to spend billions on salaries and emoluments to the detriment of development.
The governors and MCAs are in their fourth year in office, having become frequent fliers and globetrotters ostensibly in efforts aimed at development benchmarking. Being new entities the counties had a wonderful opportunity to set a new tone and direction but are squandering it.
Two caps need to be legislated – the minimum the counties may spend on development and the maximum governors and MCAs may spend on international travel.
