Programme Based Budgets (PBBs) have become a common feature in many countries around the world to improve how budgets are prepared and tracked. In Kenya, PBBs have been the format adopted for budgeting since FY 2013/14. PBBs are meant to improve the process of how governments prioritize services that have the best value for citizens through a clear prioritization process. In addition, they give governments a platform to ensure their budgets are efficient and effective with clear targets and milestones of what needs to be achieved and in what timelines. Most importantly, they provide citizens with a platform to understand the justification for policy decisions that are made through government budgets. PBBs organize budgets around a set of objectives implemented through clear programmes spread across different Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government. These budgets also come with clear performance information that is supposed to help set milestones to achieve the programme objectives. A key difference of PBBs from line-item budgets is their focus on budget outputs rather than inputs in the latter.
The Public Finance Management Act 2012, 129(1)(2) requires the County Executive Committee member for finance to prepare and submit budget estimates and other documents supporting the budget of the county government to the County Assembly by April 30th. The budget estimates shall present the detailed budget programmes and sub-programmes that are proposed to be implemented in a financial
Year.
This guide looks at the presentation and level of information provided by county governments in Kenya in their PBBs. The objective is to provide an outlay of what is working well in the preparation of programmes budgets across Kenya’s counties and areas that need to be improved. This guide comes nine years after Kenya first prepared PBBs at the national level and eight years after counties made the shift in their budget presentations.
This guide provides an outline of key components that make up a good Programme Based Budget based on the requirements in the Public Finance Management Act, 2012 and good practices from other jurisdictions around the World. The examples used in the guide are drawn from national and county PBBs and the South African national budget.
