The Road Maintenance Levy Fund (RMLF) disbursements is the source of a new battle between National Treasury, counties and the Commission of Revenue Allocation.
Council of Governors and CRA are now pushing for direct allocations of the fund, separately from the equitable share, unlike in the last financial year that it was includes in the Sh385billion that was disbursed to counties.
Despite pushing for the increase CRA and CoG, do not agree on both the equitable share amount and the road maintenance levy amount.
Commission of Revenue Allocation Chairperson Mary Wanyonyi, proposed that the counties receive an equitable share of Sh398 billion from Sh385 billion in the last financial year.
This will be topped up by an additional Sh9.5 billion from the fuel maintenance levy.
Council of Governors led by chairperson and Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru, however are pushing for an equitable allocation of Sh439.5 billion to be topped up by Sh10.5 billion from the road maintenance levy.
This will total to Sh450 billion in equitable share to the counties, the commission on the other hand is recommending an increase by Sh13 billion in the next financial year from Sh385 to Sh398.
“The Sh10.5 billion being allocated as the road maintenance levy fund conditional grant is an ordinary revenue which comes from the fuel levy fund and is not part of ordinary revenue being shared under the division of revenue bill,” said Waiguru.
Both the CoG and CRA were speaking during their submissions to the Senate Finance and Budget Committee to deliberate on the Budget Policy Statement, Medium Term Debt Management Strategy and Medium Term Revenue Strategy.
Based on an ordinary revenue projection of Sh2.95 trillionin the financial year 2024/25, the National Treasury has proposed that Sh2.53 trillion be allocated to the national government, Sh401.6 billion to county governments as equitable revenue share and Sh17.6 billion to the equalization fund.
The allocation is marginally higher than the Sh396.05 billion that the Corn n1ission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) had earlier this month proposed for disbursen1en to the devolved units.
Treasury said that the allocation has been informed by the need for continuous rationalisation of expenditures, by eliminating non-core expenditures.
The governors in their submissions to the Senate Committee proposed for the disbanding of Kenya Roads Board and Kenya Rural Roads Authority, as they push for direct disbursement of the roads fund.
“There is no need for all those road agencies when the roads are in the counties. We can save on those staff and utilise those in the counties,” said Waiguru.
According to CoG, the allocations approved by National Treasury, which is at 13 per cent of the local revenue collections, falls short of the constitutional threshold of 15 per cent.
The committee meeting chaired by Mandera County Senator Ali Roba sought to find out the criteria that will be used to allocate available public resources, between the national and county governments as per the Budget Policy Statement.
The Medium Term Debt Management Strategy on the other hand provides information including the total stock of debt, strategy on the debt management and details regarding sustainability of the amount of debt.
The Medium Term Revenue Strategy details a framework for mobilisation of revenues to finance government programmes and projects.
