Bomet County Government is hoping to hit a revenue collection target of Sh300m after adopting the e-pay automated system.
Speaking in his office, the area County Executive Committee for Finance (CEC), Andrew Kimutai, noted that the County has been struggling to raise anticipated revenues to realise its projects within the County due to loopholes that come along with the initial cash manual system.
“We have been facing challenges here with our revenue collection, in the financial year 2019/20 our target was Sh245 million but we managed Sh211 million. We have realised that revenue from our people might be ending up in wrong hands hence the implementation of the system,” explained Mr Kimutai.
He also added that taxpayers will be willing to remit their dues knowing that their money will be getting directly to the government which thereafter will be used to initiate projects onboard.
The new system which was launched last week on Thursday by Governor Dr. Hillary Barchok is expected to meet new targets that have been causing havoc to meet.
Governor Hillary Barchok said the county has been unable to meet its full potential of own-source revenue collection of Sh700 million annually due to shortage in various departments.
“Revenue collection has been a major challenge and we have been delivering less than a quarter of our potential because of the manual systems that we have been using over the years,” said Dr. Barchok during the launching exercise.
Dr. Barchok’s administration has contracted Jambo Pay, the company that ran Nairobi’s eJijiPay online revenue collection for more than five years.
It’s expected that the e-payment system will be monitored in real-time with fees paid directly to the county’s revenue bank account which would minimise loopholes, and boost performance and efficiency.
JamboPay will collect payments on its platform across all revenue streams that include health, trade and tourism in all the five sub-counties of Bomet East, Bomet Central, Konoin, Sotik and Chepalungu.
Reports also indicate that the system is expected to curb cases of landowners not remitting their rates and even avoiding payments of principals.
However, the CEC for finance maintained that changes in revenue collection are likely going to take longer as business was ravaged by Covid 19 oppression.
“Improvements in terms of higher revenue collection is likely going to be seen in other years due to the impact of Corona in business,” said Mr Kimutai.
By Lamech Arisa
