A HANDBOOK ON BUDGETING

Centre for Democracy and Development:
A Handbook on Budgeting: A Guide to the Due Process Approach
Lagos: Centre for Democracy and Development 2005.
ISBN: 1-902296-21-4. (ix+110 pp.)

From the Foreword: "Is participatory budgeting possible? There is no doubting the fact that citizens and civil society organisations must be involved in government decisions about how public money should be spent on their behalf if sustainable development is ever to occur. Studies and the trend of society have shown that budgeting should not be left to the technocrats alone. ... For the budgetary process to be considered truly participatory the voices and priorities of minority and majority groups have to be reflected in the final analysis and, the engagement of the community with the process also has to be sustainable. This in a nutshell, is participatory budgeting.
The challenge is how? How do we ensure that the critical voices are heard, and not just heard but also listened to, and that their views also get integrated into the final budgetary spending? How do we build capacity to sustain this engagement of the critical policy arenas? We cannot ignore the fact that monitoring the trend of public expenditure is a political task, which demands skills, knowledge, information sharing and the cultivation of mass support to facilitate and sustain the process amongst stakeholders. Given the lack of precedence in demanding for such a policy standpoint, there are bound to be challenges of awareness and technical skills to demand and ensure the realisation of such budgets. One of such is provision of information for civil society to ask relevant questions and to monitor resource allocations."

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. The Concept of Budgeting

2. Policy and Legal Frameworks of Budgeting

3. The Budgeting Process

4. Budget Analysis

5. Case Studies of Due Process in Budgeting:
Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Mexico, South Africa and Philippines

6. Conclusion

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