Lawmakers yesterday told off National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi over his explanations that ‘liquidity’ challenges are to blame for the delays in releasing the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF). 

This is after Mbadi, a former ODM MP, revealed the default in the disbursement of monies to the kitty was because the National Treasury was required to pay Sh150 billion as statutory deductions in the last three months.

The MPs claimed the Sh7 billion Mbadi said he released to the NGCDF board yesterday was ‘too little’ to meet all the needs of the constituencies including settling bursaries for learners and thus told him to his face that they will not take anything short of Sh21 billion. 

Speaking on the floor of the House where Mbadi had appeared to give the status of the monies, the MPs said the CS should not use the statutory obligations they are mandated to pay to decline to release monies to the constituencies. 

The sentiments by the MPs came after Mbadi who defended the Treasury disclosed that at the moment a total of Sh21 billion to the kitty since December 13 and is expected to release another Sh7 billion by April 29.

He allayed fears that it was intentional for the Treasury not to release NGCDF.

“To NGCDF, we have two months that we have defaulted now. I have to give a commitment again because you can see we have the intention to release the money to NGCDF, in the course of this April we release another Sh7 billion.”

“I cannot promise that we will release the money next week because we are paying other obligations but I can promise that we can release Sh7 billion to the board by the end of the month,” he stated. 

Mbadi said the low Exchequer releases are due to liquidity issues as the government is required to settle various obligations such as loans, pay salaries as well as send capitation to schools.