Meeting with Members of the Finance and Budget Standing Committee of the Senate

Economic Planning Principal Secretary, James Muhati lead the Planning Team in the meeting for the Senators in the Finance and Budget Standing Committee in Mombasa to discuss the Role of Economic Planning in Kenya.

In his brief to the Senators, the PS has tackled among others: the role of Economic Planning, the MTPIV 2023- 2027 Status which is to be launched soon, achievements and challenges, the mechanisms of collaboration in terms of effectiveness in delivering the SDEP Mandate, opportunities that exists for improvement, among other elaborate issues discussed.

The Principal Secretary also referred to the Executive Order Number 1 of January, 2023 which outlines the functions of the State Department as follows;

FUNCTIONS OF ECONOMIC PLANNING

1. National and Sectoral Development Planning;
2. National Statistics Management;
3. National Census and Housing Surveys;
4. Population Policy Management;
5. Liaison with Economic Commission for Africa;
6. Monitoring and Evaluation of Economic Trends;
7. Coordination of Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation of Sustainable Development Goals.(SDGs).

On their part, the Senators are concerned that the Counties are not developing at the same speed. They have raised the question of whether the National Government supports Counties in development planning or they are left to do their plans independently. They request for a nexus to be emphasized between the National Government development Planning with that of the County Panning.
This aspect calls for proper planning and resource allocation. To respond to the issues raised, the State Department for Economic Planning reiterated that they develop and issue comprehensive guidelines to the Counties for the development of the County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs) to guide them on their annual Plans on projects and Programmes.

Other deliberations are centered on Budgets, gaps, alignments to Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda(BETA), Legislative Framework especially for the SAGAs among others. The Planning Team is composed of the Heads of SAGAs and their Senior Directors , Directors of Various Directorates in Economic Planning and other Senior Staff. The PS was received on arrival by the EPS, Katherine Muoki.