Nairobi County to automate revenue collection by June

The Nairobi County Government plans to fully automate payments by July, in a move aimed at sealing revenue leakage.

The county has partnered with online payments provider, Jambo pay to automate the system, and will now see land rates and renewal of business permits paid online.

“All payments for land rates, parking, rentals and construction approvals will be migrated to the electronic payment platform,” Nairobi County ICT Executive Anne Lokidor said.

City Hall has been over the last two years, running a parallel system to collect revenue manually.

Currently 31 percent of all payments to the county are made electronically.

The migration of parking payments to the electronic platform has been the biggest driver of uptake of the e-payments.

In the 2014/2015 financial year, city hall revenue collection increased by Sh1.3 billion in following the introduction of its electronic payments system dubbed e-jiji pay.

Where manual payments still dominate, revenue growth has been steady at an average increase of 6.3 percent, while Ejiji Pay payments have registered 30 percent revenue growth.

“No one will be left behind, we will make compliance easy and assist those who have difficulties, but really we have to move over from the manual payments which are cumbersome and an avenue for revenue leakage,” Ms Lokidor added.

Payers of land rates, housing and market rentals as well as construction permits have been the most hesitant to migrate to the electronic platform and the Nairobi County government is working on a sensitisation campaign for this category of payers.