Budget shows government priorities and serves as a yardstick for measuring government’s commitment to fulfilling to the letter, the ‘social contract’ it entered with the people. In other words, accessing the actual level and allocation of public expenditure is the key to understanding any government’s true expenditure priorities and coherence with the government’s policy objectives. It is a great challenge that requires policymakers and civil society to demand for reliable and up-to-date information on the structure of the sectors and their financing with special interest in how much is budgeted for every sector. Other key questions which are of great help include: How much is actually released for every sector? What percentage of this actual release is spent? How equitably is it spent? What is the distribution of expenditure among the sub-sectors? Answers to these questions will provide a basis for understanding the government financial operations which ultimately will contribute to the goals of resource allocation, usage efficiency and fairly balanced spread of budget allocation among sectors.

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