Question 1The Budget Cycle can be described as consisting of
Question 1The Budget Cycle can be described as consisting of.
Question 1The Budget Cycle can be described as consisting of four phases.Please list all four phases, one word for each phase.Question 2You are the Director of the Budget Department in your Government Agency and you proposeintroducing the concept of Beyond Budgeting as a pilot (i.e. as a trial) in your agency. You explainto the Head of the Agency that you will ensure that the overall annual spending authority of thisagency would be obeyed during the pilot phase (to preempt her most likely first reaction) but thatindividual Departments within the agency could operate within the concept.The head of the Agency reviews the concept and asks three questions:i) The budgets have served in the past as fixed performance contracts . Now you proposewe should instead have relative improvement contracts . Why? ii) If you and I no longer set specific budgets (i.e. expenditure limits) for individualDepartments, what other means of control would we have? iii) Yes, we could devolve spending decisions to a lower level but I believe we can do thisequally well. Then why should we entrust the lower level with such authority? Please provide in your reply:Three reasons for i), three examples for ii) and one applicable principle for iii).Question 3List the three key objectives of public financial management and explain in detail what each of thethree means.Question 4You are the Permanent Secretary in your country s Ministry of Finance. A new Minister has beenappointed; she hasn t served in the Finance Ministry since 1980. As a result, she knows very littleabout the public financial management revolution. You have to brief her before a joint meeting withEuropean Union donor countries who are linking their release of the next round of funding to how yourcountry is assessed in terms of the quality of its public financial management. Please write a briefingnote for the Minister that covers:1. How and why public financial management (PFM) has changed in the past 25 years or so,including flaws and weaknesses of the traditional budget-focused approach.2. What donors in particular hope to achieve or avoid by requiring a strong public financialmanagement framework.3. Any three of these four PFM initiatives:a) Medium Term Expenditure Frameworkb) Performance Budgetingc) Numerical Rulesd) Fiscal Risk ManagementQuestion 5Explain clearly, giving at least two reasons to support each answer, how a government s budget can doany two of the following:i) Translate the government s stated social priorities into practiceii) Increase transparency about the government s prioritiesiii) Promote sustained and non-inflationary economic growthiv) Hurt the country s ability to borrow overseasQuestion 6 see the attached fileLook at the table and answer the following three True or False questions about Malawi s Budget andargue your case on (iv):i) Based on the years shown, Malawi s government total nominal expenditure as apercentage of GDP has been growing steadily since 1990 (T/F)ii) Nominal Military expenditure in 1990 accounted for less than 10 percent of GDP (T/F)iii) Real government expenditure was higher in 2005 relative to 1995 (T/F)iv) The government says the steady increase each year in expenditure on educationdemonstrates its prioritization of education. Use the table to support or argue againstthis supposition.Please refer also to the Excel file Tables for Question 6 ,Sheet Table for Question 6 .Question 7Richard Allen refers in Challenges of Reforming Budgetary Institutions in Developing Countries tothree stages of historical development often observed in countries with regard to the evolution ofbudgetary institutions, including in developing countries. One of the three stages is called open-access society .How could the concept of Beyond Budgeting create an open-access-agency with regard toparticipation of staff and other stakeholders?
Question 1The Budget Cycle can be described as consisting of
