The Nyandarua government has blamed the National Treasury and the repeat 2017 presidential elections for failure to spend Sh1.1billion development funds in the last financial year.
In a press release yesterday, Nyandarua Finance executive Mary Mugwanja said the funds were released late to the county.
Mugwanja was reacting to a story by the Star this week on the county’s poor utilisation of the last financial year’s development budget where out of Sh2.02 billion, only Sh895 million was spent.
She said as at June 30, the county had not received Sh1.04 billion from the Treasury.
Even if the development projects had been completed by June 30, payment for the same would not have been made due to the late release from the Treasury, she said.
“This was a major challenge across the country, affecting all counties as reflected in a report by the Controller of Budget. The national economy was grappling with the impact of repeat elections on October 2017 and dwindling revenues.”
Mugwanja said procurement for projects was done in time and successful bidders awarded their respective contracts.
The executive said the county paid for only the completed projects while funds for the uncompleted ones were spent as unspent balances .
He said these funds have been appropriated in the first supplementary budget for 2018-2019 which is pending approval by the assembly.
Once this is added to the current preliminary budget, Mugwanja said the budget will rise from Sh6.3 billion to Sh7.6billion, accounting for 41 per cent of the development budget.
Out of this Sh1.1 billion will go towards road upgrades, while Sh344 million will cover water provision.
Sh743million will go to Agriculture, Industrialisation, Trade, and Cooperatives while the lands department will take Sh315 million.
The finance chief said the county will not lose any money as the unspent funds were not returned to the Treasury but appropriated in this financial year.
Mugwanja said projects will only be paid for upon full satisfaction by all stakeholders including residents and technical teams in the respective wards once work has been done.