Gov’t collected Ksh900 million on eCitizen in 24 hours

Gov’t collected Ksh900 million on eCitizen in 24 hours

Gov’t collected Ksh900 million on eCitizen in 24 hours

Months after President William Ruto ordered the use of a single pay bill number  and the digitization of all government services, the government has broken records  in eCitizen revenue collection. Immigration and Citizen Services PS Julius Bitok announced in a statement dated  December 21 that the digital platform’s daily income collection had, for the first  time, surpassed Ksh900 million.

According to the PS, on Wednesday, December 20, Ksh223,714,916 ($1,446,495) of the Ksh903.6 million that eCitizen collected was collected in dollars.Since Ruto ordered all state agencies to integrate all of their services into the eCitizen platform by the end of the year, the amount of money received through the platform has steadily increased.

The President had also directed that all other pay bill numbers be deactivated and all payments channelled through a consolidated pay bill, 222222.

Bitok further revealed that since the directives were made, roughly 14,000 services have been onboarded onto the digital platform.

The development later saw the collected revenue increase to an average of Ksh300 million per day last month.”Data from Treasury reveals in November, Ksh4.664 billion was collected up from Ksh1.44 billion in June before the presidential directive. The amounts for July, August and September were Ksh2.362 billion, Ksh3.636 billion and Ksh4,233 billion respectively,” read the statement in part.

“The government is banking on an average of 5,000 new users who sign up to eCitizen daily in addition to the 11 million eCitizen existing users alongside the onboarding of more services to further increase its daily revenue collection.”

In June of this year, Ruto merged all of the state agencies’ pay bills in an effort to realign financial management, guarantee efficiency, and lessen the likelihood of corruption that is encouraged by in-person encounters in government offices.

“We must shut down the rest of the Pay Bill Numbers and remain only with one to channel all the money to the government through Treasury,” Ruto said at the time.By the end of 2022, the state expected to have collected Ksh350 billion in service fees and other charges.However, the decision soon alarmed financial experts, including as Auditor General Nancy Gathungu, who warned that billions would be vulnerable to theft.

“I have already raised some concerns with the treasury about internal controls. If we decide to put all our eggs in one basket, we must be sure that we have plugged all the loopholes in revenue collection,” Gachungu told a Parliamentary sitting in September.