Thursday, 15 May, 2025
Critical underfunding in livestock development state department will hinder implementation of key projects, Agriculture and Livestock Committee told
Thursday 15th May, 2025Parliament Buildings
State Department of Livestock Development headed by PS Jonathan Mueke has pleaded with the National Assembly Committee on Agriculture and Livestock for enhanced budgetary allocation for the FY 2025/2026, citing critical underfunding.
When the State Department appeared before the Committee chaired by, Dr. John Mutunga (Tigania West) this morning, PS Mueke stated that the underfunding if not addressed would hinder the implementation of key projects as well as delay the completion of pending ones.
According to PS Mueke, the State Department has an approved overall budget of Kshs 9.986 billion comprising of Kshs 5.07billion as recurrent expenditure and Kshs 4.916 billion as development expenditure.
This he says is against a total requirement of Kshs 29.539 billion comprising of Kshs 6.785 billion for recurrent expenditure and Kshs 22.755 for development expenditure.
“This budget cuts have led to a shortfall of Kshs. 1.714 billion for recurrent expenditure and Kshs 17.839 billion for development expenditure. The shortfall will negatively affect the implementation of the key mandate as well as delays in projects completion timelines. The State Department requests for intervention of this Committee in enhancing ceiling for effective delivery of the planned activities,” PS Mueke said.
Reacting to the presentation, the Committee Chairperson said that the Committee will do what it can to get more budget allocation for the Department. He however cautioned it against failing to utilize the approved budgets for the intended purposes.
“We are operating under an environment that is not very flexible and we can’t promise a lot but we will do what we can. We should also come together and deliberate on how to make the State Department come out of this pitfall,” Dr. Mutunga said.
PS Mueke disclosed that among the adversely affected projects include: finalization of Livestock Master Plan, distribution of milk coolers in all counties through Livestock Value Chain Support Project and capacity building for hides and skins value chain players through the hides, skins and leather fund.
On this, the Committee Vice-Chairperson, Hon. Brighton Yegon (Konoin) tasked the PS to explain why the Department has not followed up on the existing milk coolers, disclosing that the ones already distributed across some counties are obsolete since farmers shied away from the high cost of generators operating the coolers.
Hon. Patrick Osero (Borabu) echoed the Vice-Chairperson’s sentiments calling on the Department to dispense off with the Livestock Master Plan project. He said that without it the country is still in the dark due to lack of research and empirical data.
PS Mueke admitted that indeed the milk coolers and the dryers were obsolete and to avoid such an occurrence again, they are now sending an internal auditor to targeted areas to do verification and ascertain whether there is enough infrastructure or not before distribution.
“The new milk coolers that are set to be distributed will be solar powered to address the issue of high cost of maintaining the generated powered ones,” the PS disclosed.
Hon. Farah Yussuf (Wajir West) was concerned why the newly created Livestock Marketing Board did not have any allocation and whether they had requested for a budget towards it or not.
Responding to the concern, the PS said that they had requested for funds to make the Board fully operational but they had not received any allocation.