By April 2nd this year, Kenyans will start making their payments electronically as the country’s ICT Cabinet Secretary; Fred Matiang’i says that automated payments will be completed by then.
The payment is focused on improving accountability, efficiency and transparency in Government transactions as well as preventing revenue leaks.
“The National Treasury will publish regulations to operationalize the Public Payment Act before the electronic payment system starts operating; the Government has done so much in terms of digitizing its payment system. What we want to do now is to ensure that this process is institutionalized,” said Matiang’i.
According to Kenya’s Auditor General, Government ministries and departments failed to account for over Sh338 billion of the total Government spending for the 2011-2012 fiscal year; adding that only six percent, which is KSh55.2 billion of the Sh920 billion that the Government spent during the financial year was fully accounted for.
An additional expenditure of Sh561 billion was not supported by adequate documents, thus the move to automate the payment system to seal loopholes for corruption. The auditor said a third of the 252 financial statements of institutions audited were either deliberately misstated or revealed fraudulent expenditure, according to the Auditor General.
