Module III: Understanding the Local Government Budgeting Process

This sub module is designed to offer young people the knowledge, skills and opportunities to understand how financial resources are allocated at the local government level. It is a sub module for educating and empowering young people to engage with political leaders and technical staffs on all matters pertaining to localized planning and budgeting. Through this sub module, NAC is keen to strengthen inclusive governance by giving young people as a marginalized group, the opportunities to have their voices heard and to influence public-decision making critical to their interests. Understanding the budget and related advocacy is broken down into several components to clarify, in the simplest terms, how local governments collect revenue, undertake allocations and execute the budget to deliver services and goods to citizens.

The justification for this sub module is because ‘preparation, approval and implementation of a budget is the most significant fiduciary duty of local government staffs and political leaders, as it determines the basket of goods and services to be provided, and where and how they will be provided. Because these goods and services are provided to citizens, their active participation in, and consequently influence of local government plans and budgets becomes a significant tennet of local democratic governance.

The sub module heavily draws from, and is constructed alongside the District Budget Framework Paper, which is the local government overall strategy document for the district budget, designed to create a link between central Government’s overall policies and the local government budgets. The emphasis on the district budget framework paper is because it contains information regarding the local economic development policy architecture, local revenue projections and the overall district resource envelop. In addition, the framework paper situates the district service delivery interventions over the 12-month financial period.