Socioeconomic status of Mandera County with COVID-19

Abstract

The county total revenue has significantly grown over the years as the Government focus on enhanced services and amenities for its residents. Analysis of the sources of revenue indicate that equitable share has been the main source of county funding accounting for more than 70 per cent of the total revenues. Monthly cash transfers from the National Government have always had an increasing trend from January to June over the years. Conditional grants are also 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) and Sweden. Analysis of the quarterly OSR show that collections in the third quarter have been the highest during the period under review save for FY 2015/16. In FY 2014/15 the county reported Ksh. 1,570.4 million in pending bills. This declined steadily to Ksh. 107.6 million in FY 2017/18 with development spending related pending bills accounting for 52.7 per cent of this. To ensure continued recovery, the county must now move quickly to tackle the problem of pending bills, 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 and ensure that the ongoing projects are completed before launching new project and clear any pending bills and arrears owed to suppliers.