City Hall posts Sh1.2bn revenue increase, but misses target

City Hall has posted a Sh1.2 billion increase in own source revenue collection in the financial year ended June 30, 2021, recording an improvement across all the 12 months.

According to data from the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the taxman collected Sh9.7 billion in the just ended financial year compared to Sh8.5 billion in the financial year ended June 30, 2020 against a target of Sh17.31 billion.

However, the county government once again failed to hit its revenue target of Sh16.4 billion set in the financial year.

KRA managed to collect Sh4 billion in the first half of the financial year covering between July and December 2020.

This is after collecting Sh460.9 million in July, another Sh455.2 million in August, Sh635.2 million in September with October netting Sh1.1 billion. In November, Sh509.5 million was collected and Sh851.8 million in December.

This improved to Sh5.7 billion in the second half where KRA collected Sh4 billion in the three months of January, February and March – which marks the period where most Nairobi business owners renew licences.

During a similar period in the financial year ending June 30, 2020, City Hall collected Sh3.1 billion.

Between April and June, the Authority realised Sh1.6 billion with April netting Sh651.7 million, the collection dipped to Sh494.4 million in May and further to Sh468.8 million in June.

This represented Sh300 million improvement on the Sh5.4 billion collected in the second half of the 2019/2020 financial year.

Low revenue collection  

Nairobi County Assembly Budget and Appropriations committee chairperson Robert Mbatia said the collection is a significant improvement considering challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The previous administration had collected Sh8.5 billion in a full financial year but this is now Sh9.7 billion. We cannot be blind to ignore the improvement considering Covid-19 challenges have been with us throughout the financial year,” said Mr Mbatia.

KRA was officially appointed the principal county revenue collector on March 16, 2020 as part of the agreement in the Deed of Transfer of functions of the county to the National Government.

The taxman was tasked with improving the county revenue collection with the county government collecting slightly over Sh10 billion annually through JamboPay.

City Hall has been recording dwindling revenue collection failing to meet its revenue targets since 2013.

The highest amount ever collected by City Hall was Sh11.71billion in the financial year ended June 30, 2016 against a target of Sh15.3 billion.

In financial year ended June 30, 2019 Nairobi recorded an annual revenue of Sh10.17 billion, Sh5 billion off the target of Sh15.29 billion.

This was a fall from the year before where Sh10.93 billion against a target of Sh19.57 billion was recorded.

[email protected]