A Total of 2.3 Billion Shillings In NCPB Cannot be Traced

An audit report tabled to parliament revealed that the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) cannot account for 2.3 billion shillings made from the sale of 2,303,235 bags of fertilizer.

The NCPB is said to have failed to bank all the money made from the sales of fertilizers procured by the Department of Agriculture to Kenya Commercial Bank where it would then be forwarded to the department’s account in the Central Bank of Kenya.

According to the report by outgoing Auditor General Edward Ouko, NCPB sold out locally blended fertilizers to farmers at subsidiary rates of 1,500 shillings per 50kg bag for all planting fertilizers and all top dressing fertilizers and 1,300 shillings for every 50kg bag of Sulphate Ammonia.

The Auditor-General put both the Ministry of Agriculture and NCPB at fault saying that both parties did not have an agreement on how to handle the cash made from selling imported and locally blended fertilizers.

According to his report, there is no evidence that the ministry of agriculture made a follow up on the sales and quantity delivered by the year ended June 30, 2018.

NCPB distributed bags of local blend planting fertilizers and top dressing fertilizers, where 1,200,000 bags of DAP, 1,014,000 bags of CAN, 100,000 bags of NPK, 50,000 bags of blend four and 24,000 of blend nine fertilizers were distributed to various counties for the short rains in October 2017 and the long rains in February 2018.

It also emerged that 200,000 more bags of DAP were distributed and that the distribution of the 100,000 bags of NPK, 50,000 bags of blend four and 24,000 of blend nine was not clear.

Over one million bags of CAN planting, fertilizer meant to be distributed by M/s Export Trading Company Limited were withheld due to their poor quality but the auditors were not sure whether they were eventually sold to farmers.

The audit report also found that about 2.6 million bags of maize have not been accounted for as Strategic Grain Reserve Fund said it had a stock of 3.9 million bags while NCPB records showed that there had been 6.5 million bags.