Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja faces a massive task in implementing his rosy manifesto for city residents, as he must first deal with a mountain of pending bills that totaled Sh99 billion in June.
As a result of a series of leadership changes, the county has been unable to pay contractors and suppliers, with mismanagement at City Hall nearly causing the county to choke under debts.
The county accumulated an additional Sh14 billion in pending bills between July 2021 and June 2022, on top of the Sh85.7 billion as of the end of June 2021, according to the Controller of Budget (COB). This means that the county accumulated Sh1.2 billion in pending bills each month over the last fiscal year.
“At the beginning of FY 2021/22, the County failed to prepare a satisfactory payment plan for settling the pending bills in the current financial year,” COB Margaret Nyakang’o has said.
“During the period under review, the County Treasury did not provide a report on the settlement of pending bills as of June 30, 2022.”
Ms Nyakang’o reported in her report on counties’ budget implementation in the 2021/22 financial year that by June 2022, pending bills in Nairobi County constituted 65 percent of total bills by all 47 counties.
“As of June 30, 2022, counties reported accumulated pending bills amounting to Sh153.02 billion, [comprising] Sh151.68 billion by the County Executive and Sh1.34 billion by the County Assemblies.
Nairobi City County’s outstanding pending bills accounted for 64.7 percent of the total stock of pending bills at Sh99.06 billion, according to the report.
County pending bills this year are also significantly higher than the Sh96 billion reported by June last year, implying that counties accumulated an average of Sh4.7 billion monthly, cumulatively.
Sh151 billion of the bills are owed by county executives, the majority of whom have had their governors lose seats or retire after serving the constitutional two-term limit, and will create a new headache for incoming governors as they balance them with rosy promises to county residents.
Mombasa, at Sh5.87 billion, and Kiambu, at Sh5.23 billion, are two other counties with large pending bills.
“To address the identified challenges, the Controller of Budget advises county governments to settle pending bills as a first charge in the FY 2022/23 budget in line with Regulation 41 (2) of the Public Finance Management (County Governments) 2015,” the COB stated.
The report also noted an alarming situation in which a total of Sh22 billion in pending bills relate to recurrent activities, implying that some counties are going without paying workers’ salaries and settling other expenditures classified as recurrent budget.
In Mombasa, for example, of the Sh5 billion in outstanding bills, Sh3.9 billion is owed by the county executive for recurring activities and Sh1.2 billion is owed for development.
Lamu (Sh4.3 million), Mandera (Sh5 million), and Elgeyo Marakwet have the fewest pending bills (Sh14.3 million).
