Socio-economic Status of Wajir County with Covid 19

Abstract

Wajir total County revenue has significantly grown by 144 percent from Ksh 5.71 billion in FY 2013/14 to Ksh 13.93 billion in FY 2018/19. During FY 2019/20 and FY 2020/21 the county’s total revenue declined to Ksh. 10.01 billion and Ksh 10.10 billion respectively, following the adverse effect of COVID-19 pandemic that affected various revenue streams. 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. OSR contribution to total revenue has been less than 1.5 percent over the period under review. Generally, pending bills related to development have been greater than those related to recurrent expenditure on average accounting for 87.1 per cent of the pending bills portfolio. Going forward, it would be important for the county to strengthen its OSR collection framework as well as policies to improve on its contribution to the total revenues. 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. In addition to this, the Nairobi County will mobilize more finances from OSR to increase the available revenues for budgetary operations and seek for more funding in form of grants from development partners to cater for the critical development projects in the county.