The budget process itself is a recurring cycle in which (a) the chief
executive of the government, with the operating agencies, develops a service
plan to respond to the conditions anticipated in the upcoming year; (b) the
appropriate legislative body reviews that plan and adopts a program response
based on that plan; (c) the administration puts the adopted program into
effect; and (d) an external review body audits and evaluates the executed
program and reports its findings to the legislative body and the citizenry.13 In
contrast to the informality and uncertainty found in many developing
countries, local governments in Uganda follow a standard budget process
and face no need for approval from the central government (Obwona and
others 2000)—a good beginning, because an established budget process is a
fundamental requirement of local fiscal administration.
The process may provide different budgetary paths for capital (or developmental) expenditures and operating expenditures. Such dual budget
systems have created problems in a number of developing countries because
the recurring funds needed to operate developmental capital projects are
ignored in the budget process,14 because coordination between donor-financed
(mostly developmental) and domestically financed (mostly operating)
programs is not undertaken and priorities get distorted from local choices, and
because development programs are often planned without regard to resource
constraints (Alm and Boex 2002; Sarraf 2005). Indeed, failure to integrate the
two budgets and to recognize their total cost of implementation has historically
been a fiscal problem in several African countries.