Migori County Government failed to meet its development plans twice, since the advent of devolution.
It emerged Wednesday that the first and second County integrated development plans (CIDPs) were never successful due to reasons ranging from huge financial gaps to weak monitoring and evaluation (M and E) framework mechanisms.
County government leadership led by Director for Economic Planning Joseph Onyancha told participants during the forming of the region’s technical team towards the development of the third generation CIDP that the past two plans between 2013 and 2022 failed because of their huge budgets of up to Sh90 billions that were never funded fully.
Onyancha affirmed to stakeholders drawn from both the National and County governments, the youth and representatives from Council of Governors among others that apart from lack of adequate funding from the National Treasury, the county leadership also failed to raise enough revenue to augment the development kitty.
Officials from the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) who sponsored the one-day dissemination and capacity building forum on the guidelines for preparation of the 3rd CIDP at the local IFAD hall in Migori town, urged the leadership in the region to come up with a CIDP that is easy to fulfil and that will give residents value for their money.
Moses Njenga from KIPPRA said it was important for the County leadership to include all sectors in the plan to enable the region move forward in development, adding that the county must also identify flagship projects and prioritise their implementations.
Stakeholders expressed concern over inadequate funding and late disbursement of funds from the national treasury that led to programmes and projects fused in the previous two CIDPs stalling.
At the same time, the forum that was officially opened by Sun East Deputy County Commissioner Benson Karani blamed bad costing of the previous CIDPs and urged the local County government to pull up in revenue collection.
According to statistics availed by the KIPPRA team, the county government annual budget increased from Sh4.7 billion in 2014/2015 to Sh 5.9 billion in 2017/2018.
However, during the same period, own source revenue decreased from Sh355 million in 2014/2015 to Sh 222 million in 2017/2018 and nosedived further to less than Sh200 million in 2021/2022.
County spending on CIDPs was therefore heavily dependent on the low and late disbursement of national government transfer funds, leading to lacklustre implementation of programmes and projects in the region.
The Deputy County Commissioner assured of the support of the national government to the development of a good plan noting that Migori’s economy being reliant on agriculture, which accounts for 42 per cent on gross County Products Growth (GCP), should be boosted by considering a mix of agriculture productivity.
“This will enhance measures such as modernisation of production systems, reduction of cost of farming, improvement of infrastructure to link rural areas with markets and value chain promotion to boost the sector productivity,” he explained.
He told the technical team to strive to produce a CIDP third generation that would capture the spirit of addressing adequately policy matters on children, youth and women, health, job creation, infrastructure, water and sanitation (WASH) and education among other crucial issues.
