A
- Audit ReportThe Audit Report is an independent and authoritative account of whether the government’s reporting of how it raised taxes and spent public funds during the previous year is accurate. The Audit Report also indicates whether the government has complied with financial management laws and regulations during the budget year.
B
- Budget
It is a government’s plan for how it is going to use public resources. The budget is the government’s most powerful tool to meet the needs and priorities of a country and its people.
- Budget Transparency
Transparency means that every citizen can access information on how much is allocated to different types of spending, what revenues are collected, and how international donor assistance and other public resources are used. To be transparent, a budget must respond to the following characteristics: comprehensiveness, timeliness, usefulness.
- Budget cycle
- During the budget formulation, the executive formulates the draft budget. In this step, two key-documents are expected to be published: the Pre-Budget Statement and the Executive’s Budget Proposal.
- During the budget approval, the legislature reviews and amends the budget – and then enacts it into law. From the Enacted Budget, a simplified and accessible version, the Citizens budget is expected to be produced.
- During the budget execution, the executive collects revenues and spends money as per the allocations made in the budget law. During this step, three key-documents must to be published: In-Year Reports, Mid-Year Review and Year-End Report, to evaluate budget’s implementation during the budget year and its performance as executed relative to its original budget.
- During the budget oversight, the budgets accounts are audited and audit findings are reviewed by the legislature, which requires action to be taken by the executive to correct audit findings. The Audit Report is published by an independent and autonomous organism.
C
- Citizen Budget
A government’s annual budget is normally a long and complex document and it accompanied by a number of detailed supporting documents. Even for technical experts, understanding the budget is a difficult and time-consuming task. Therefore, the Citizen Budget is a simplified summary of the budget which is designed to facilitate discussion and which is accessible to the general public.
E
- Executive Budget Proposal
The Executive Budget Proposal (EBP) is the most important policy document that a country issues each year because it translates the government’s key policy goals into action. The Executive Budget Proposal determines:
- Revenues: How much citizens will pay in taxes, how much it receives from the sale of extractive resources and how much it is receiving through aid.
- Expenditures: How resources are distributed among citizens.
- Debt: How much of the cost of government is borne by current or future generations.
