Embu has emerged as Kenya’s best-performing county in fiscal management, while Kisumu sits at the bottom of a new assessment that raises wider questions about how counties are managing public money and what this means for service delivery.
The 2024/25 County Fiscal Performance Measurement Index by the Parliamentary Budget Office provides more than a league table of the country’s 47 counties.
It offers a snapshot of how counties are managing the resources entrusted to them from collecting their own revenue and implementing budgets to controlling wage bills, spending on development and dealing with pending obligations.
Embu recorded the highest overall score at 0.689, improving from a C rating in the previous assessment. Narok followed with 0.608, while Wajir also attained a B rating, bringing the number of counties in the top performance category to three.
At the other end, Kisumu recorded the lowest overall score at 0.285.
Nairobi City, Kakamega, Busia, Bomet, Baringo, Lamu, Kajiado and Bungoma were also among counties recording scores below 0.4.
But the numbers raise a more important question for citizens: what does good or poor fiscal management actually mean on the ground?
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The Money Available for Development
The overall county fiscal performance score improved only slightly, from 0.469 in 2023/24 to 0.471 in 2024/25.
The marginal improvement suggests that while counties are making progress in some areas of financial management, major weaknesses remain.
One of the clearest concerns is development spending.
The report found that 27 counties allocated less than the statutory 30 per cent of their budgets to development expenditure.
That matters because development budgets finance projects such as roads, water systems, health facilities, markets, drainage infrastructure and other investments expected to improve living conditions.
For citizens, therefore, a low development allocation is not simply a budget statistic. It can translate into fewer completed projects and slower improvements in public services.
When the wage. bill takes too much
The other major concern is the cost of running county governments.
More than half of the counties exceeded the legal ceiling requiring personnel costs to remain within 35 per cent of total revenue.
Ten counties, including Nairobi City, Nyeri and Baringo, recorded wage-to-revenue ratios ranging from 47.13 per cent to 57.01 per cent.
The implication is straightforward, the more county revenue that goes towards salaries and benefits, the less room governments have to finance development and other priorities.
Embu offers a contrasting example.
The county scored 1.000 on wage bill management, having kept its personnel costs within the legal ceiling.
Nakuru, Narok, Kilifi and Tana River followed closely in the same indicator.
The difference between these counties and those with very high wage bills raises an important governance question: how much of a county’s money is actually available for citizens after the cost of running government has been paid?
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Revenue collection separates the counties
The index also shows that the ability of counties to raise their own money varies considerably.
Narok recorded the highest possible score of 1.000 in own-source revenue mobilisation, followed by Nairobi City at 0.981, Mombasa at 0.918, Kiambu at 0.910 and Kajiado at 0.907.
Kisumu, however, scored only 0.068 in the same indicator.
Tana River was the only county to achieve the highest possible score in the own-source revenue mobilisation measure.
Stronger own-source revenue gives counties greater room to finance services and development without relying entirely on transfers from the national government.
But revenue collection also raises questions about how counties collect money, whether residents receive value for what they pay and whether revenue systems are transparent and efficient.
Women dimension
Women often depend heavily on public services and county-funded programmes, particularly in areas such as maternal and reproductive healthcare, water, markets, social protection and support for small businesses.
When development spending falls below the required threshold, or when a large share of county revenue is absorbed by personnel costs and pending bills, programmes serving these needs can face tighter financial space.
This does not mean that every poor fiscal performer is necessarily failing women. Rather, the index provides a basis for asking whether county budget choices are translating into services that respond to the different needs of women and men.
Recommendations
The Parliamentary Budget Office also identified weak audit outcomes, rising pending bills and continued dependence on national government transfers as persistent challenges.
It recommended stronger enforcement of expenditure ceilings, implementation of audit recommendations and improved revenue collection.
Senate Speaker Amason Kingi, speaking during the launch of the index, said the assessment was intended to provide an objective and standardized way of examining how counties manage public finances.
“The CFPMI is more than a publication. It provides a practical framework for assessing county governments’ compliance with the fiscal responsibility principles set out in the Constitution, the Public Finance Management Act and the County Governments Act,” Speaker Kingi said.
He said the index should not simply be used to rank counties against one another, but to identify practices that can be replicated and weaknesses that need to be addressed.
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