During the period under review, the Local Government Finance Commission achieved the following:
- Completed the holistic review of the Local Government Financing Study and submitted the report to Government for consideration and adoption of the recommendations. During the completion exercise, ministerial consultations were conducted to validate the key findings and recommendations and their policy implications.
- Convened the Local government Budget Committee to review the agreed positions in the Annual Sector Conditional Grants Negotiations in May 2012 and the way forward; and also reviewed the planning and budgeting process for local governments.
- Provided technical support in budget formulation process to 30 local governments. to orient and guide on how to follow all the steps of the budget cycle and the provisions of the Budget Act 2001 and the Sector Budgeting Manuals so as to avoid the pitfalls experienced over time in their budgeting process.
- Convened and facilitated Negotiations on effective implementation of conditional grants programmes and agreements were signed with 6 sectors out of the 7 expected to attend nwmely:
- Ministry of Water and Environment;
- Ministry of Health;
- Ministry of Trade, Industry and Corporative;
- Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries;
- Ministry of Works and Transport;
- Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development;
- Negotiation with the Ministry of Education was not carried out because the negotiation team was not dully constituted by the accounting officer. The sector conditional grants guidelines were also reviewed as agreed by both the sector ministries and Local governments.
- Began the task of reviewing the grants allocation formulae to incorporate the cross-cutting issues of gender, environment, HIV/Aids and poverty as required under the National Development Plan (NDP). The task to be completed in the FY 2013/14.
- Analyzed 133 vote level approved annual budgets for local governments for compliance with legal provisions in order to secure information that would be used to support advocacy activities for budgetary allocations to local governments, promote greater transparency in the budget process and greater responsiveness to the needs of the people and enable stakeholders to share information on the state of local government funding. One of the key findings was that out of the 133 vote level budgets, only 5 districts and 2 Municipal councils did not approve balanced budgets.
- Provided Technical Support on Property Rate Collection in 35 urban councils with the support focusing on the following:
- identifying the uncollected revenues from the property rates
- Assisting LGs in developing new and updated property rate registers and valuation list for preparing demand notes.
- Building the capacities of LGs in property rate administration.
- Identifying property rates lost as a result of exemptions of occupied residential houses.
- Conducted policy dialogue with Local Revenue Enhancement Coordinating Committee (LRECC) members on the performance and challenges in the administration of the current local revenue sources and policy issues and came up with a way forward to enhance collection of revenues. Recommendations were made to responsible ministries/Agencies/Departments to consider as for better implementation of the instrument
- Conducted regional meetings to assess the progress made on the implementation of lessons learnt from Local revenue enhancement best practices and exchange visits conducted by different local governments during the period under review.
- Conducted a deeper study on some key recommendations from Holistic review of Local Government financing on local revenue enhancement. The study focused on the recommendations for improving existing revenue sources and review of the general framework with a view of streamlining exemptions in property rates and other sources.
- Strengthened and Streamlined the Manual Records System in the Commission by training of staff.
- Conducted training on Public Services Management Practices for all staff
- Inducted all staff on the ICT Policy that was developed during the year.
Reviewed the Commission’s Strategic Plan and produced a new one for the FY 2012/13 – 2015/16.