Kenya's County Budget Transparency Survey 2022

Over a decade into a devolved government in Kenya, participatory governance, and decision-making is taking root in Kenya. There is a growing awareness among citizens of their roles and responsibilities in the budget-making process. They are better versed in how governments raise, allocate, and spend public resources, and there is more demand for transparent, equitable, and accountable budgeting systems. As a result, their demand to be involved in the budget processes will progressively keep growing, as well as the need to access budget information on the decisions being made. Additionally, the citizens want to see how budgets capture issues related to their geographic needs as well on specific groups like children, ethnic minorities, women, and persons with disabilities as this is a key indicator of equity. As such county budget transparency cannot be over emphasized.

Why then should counties be transparent with their budgets? Making budgets publicly available has great advantages, including building public trust by promoting the principles of credibility and accountability, where the government is likely to keep its commitments when budgets are publicly available and open to public scrutiny. To this end, IBP Kenya conducts the CBTS, an annual, objective, comparative measure done fairly across all the 47 sub-national units. The survey evaluates the availability and comprehensiveness of ten key budget documents.

Some key findings from the CBTS 2022 include:

There is a notable growth in budget transparency compared to previous rounds of surveys.
More counties improved their score in CBTS 2022 compared to CBTS 2021.
There are improvements in budget transparency in 6 of the 8 regional economic blocs.
Budget implementation reports remained the least published budget documents.
Despite the overall improvements in counties, some counties failed to sustain or progress their scores on budget transparency.
The findings show there is still limited documentation of the impact of public participation on budget decisions.
The level of comprehensive information provided in the published budget documents improved in CB’I’S 2022.
Counties should publish all the budget information as required by law. Despite the requirement, counties are yet to actualize this.

Explore the 2022 survey:

County summaries:

Kenya’s County Budget Transparency Survey 2022

Downloads

Kenya County Budget Transparency Survey 2022