The County Government yet again hit the headlines after emerging as the only County to have published all the seven budget documents online in results released by the International Budget Partnership (IBP).
A study conducted by IBP since 2015 revealed that it was only Elgeyo Marakwet which had the approved program based budget, citizen budget, Annual Development Plan, County Budget Review and Outlook Paper (CBROP), quarterly budget implementation reports, and Finance Act on its website.
The documents are especially key for the public during the four stages of the budget process that is, formulation, approval, implementation and evaluation.
In a map detailing the findings, EMC was the only County coloured blue meaning that it stood out above the other 46 counties in Kenya. In a report released in March, 2019, IBP said it had done an analysis of all counties.
“In our final assessment, 30 counties had published Annual Development Plans (ADPs) for 2019/20 online. This was a slight improvement from our September 2018 study, where 25 ADPs for 2018/19 were available online. The final total of 30 ADPs represents a 20 percent increase from our initial assessment in February 2019, where 25 ADPs were available online. This demonstrates that several counties responded to our initial findings by publishing their ADP online, albeit much later than the legally required date,” said the report.
The report, titled “Are Kenya Counties Making Budget Documents Available to the Public? A Review of County Websites” gave Elgeyo Marakwet a thumbs up for publishing the documents in its website www.elgeyomarakwet.go.ke which was also recently revamped to serve citizens better.
“Commendably, Elgeyo Marakwet County published all 7 documents online. Counties that published more than half of the required documents during the period of assessment were Laikipia and West Pokot (6 documents each), Kitui (5 documents), and Baringo, Makueni, Marsabit, Nyeri, and Vihiga (4 documents each). Bomet, Garissa, Kirinyaga, Kisumu, Lamu, Migori, andWajir did not publish any of the documents that were under assessment,” stated the report.
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