Socio-Economic Status of Kirinyaga County with COVID-19

Abstract

The county total revenue has significantly increased over the years as the Government focus on enhanced services to the citizens. In Kirinyaga County, total revenue increased from Ksh 3.09 billion in 2013/14 to Ksh 5.92 billion in 2020/21 with an average growth rate of 13.14 percent. The amount realized in 2020/21 was 98.9 per cent of the annual budget allocation of Ksh 6.79 million, an improvement from the 89.2 percent attained in 2019/20. Conditional grants are a major source of revenue for financing county operations and has been growing over the years. The County receives conditional grants from the National Government and development partners mainly from World Bank and Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the European Union (EU), and Sweden. The share of OSR The total revenue has similarly been robust. In 2014/15 the county reported Ksh 201.0 million in pending bills. The county did not report pending bills at the end of 2019–20. In The outstanding bills for 2020/21 totaled Ksh 402.1 million. Generally, pending bills related to development spending have been greater than those related to recurrent expenditure on average, accounting for 55.2 percent of the pending bill portfolio over the review period. To steer the county towards achieving its budgetary objective and development goals contained in the ADPs and CIDP, the county government needs to mobilize more finances from OSR to increase the available revenues for budgetary operations, seek for more funding in form of grants from development partners to cater for the critical development projects in the county, ensure that the ongoing projects are completed before launching new project and clear any pending bills and arrears owed to suppliers and ensure the ongoing infrastructure project are completed and suppliers paid within the specified timelines for optimal returns to spur investment and private sector activity.