mzalendo :: Eye On Kenyan Parliament

The budget is being delivered this week by Minister of Finance Amos Kimunya.

For policy junkies and those who’d like to stay informed, a copy of the budget outlook for 2006/2007 is available here. More importantly, the medium term strategy that will drive the budget is available here (prepared May 2006). Kudos to the Ministry of Finance for making the documents available online, there still a lot more to be done as far as opening up the process but these are important first steps in making the budget process transparent.

A brief summary of the budget process in Kenya can be found here.

A more comprehensive (and recent) paper on the process is available here.
An aside: two NGOs that run budget monitoring programs and work to make the process more accessible to the average citizen should typically be several steps ahead of the government in terms of making their publications easily accesible, but have failed dismally in this regard. Hopefully the Institute of Economic Affairs will have their 2006-7 Alternative Budget online soon and Sodenet will publish their report on the budget process in Kenya. (I’m sure it won’t cost that much more in donor funds). The IEA has made a general citizen’s guide to the budget available online, but the document is obviously a draft version (still useful reading if you can avoid be distracted by the tracking).

AOB: Anyone willing to cover the speech (televised or in person) for us? Please drop a line via the contact page.