As we all know, the 2025/26 budget process - strictly 2025/26 to 2027/28 Medium-Term Budget process - is well underway, at both national and county government levels. For the former, we now have the 2025 Budget Policy Statement (BPS), which essentially frames next year's national budget.
For our 47 county governments, we should have equivalent County Fiscal Strategy Papers (CFSP) to frame their own budgets. Because the national budget includes allocations to counties, we should probably also be close to the Division of Revenue and County Allocation of Revenue bills (DORB and CARB) by now.
Of course, this year there is the added complication of "the revised formula"- the proposed 5-year basis on which the equitable allocation from national government is shared between counties, which affects CARB. In our focus only on the national budget, we tend to ignore these intricacies, which call on us to pay equal attention to county budget processes.
We fail to appreciate the meaning of our devolved system of government.
