The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Involve us in budget process: citizen groups

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Sunday, Mar 23, 2008
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Involve us in budget process: citizen groups

Staff Reporter

‘Performance budgeting will help in bringing financial control over the money received by BBMP’

BANGALORE: With the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) budget round the corner, citizen groups have sought their involvement in the exercise.

On Saturday, Mathew Thomas of the Citizens’ Action Forum posed a few questions to a gathering. Tell me whose money that the Government is spending, he asked. “It’s the money of the citizens,” said the audience. He went on to ask three more questions, “Who should decide how much Government should spend?” “How this should be decided?” and “Who should know about the money spent?” The audience gave the same reply.

Mr. Thomas said: “It is our money that is involved in the budget ... We should get involved in the preparation of the budget and change the present system of its preparation. There is something radically wrong with the present system, where secrecy is involved. There is no performance rating at all,” he said.

Mr. Thomas was making a presentation at the seminar on “Citizen’s participation, transparency and accountability in budgeting” held here on Saturday. The seminar was organised jointly by the Citizens’ Action Forum, the Centre for Public Policy of the Indian Institute of Management, the Bangalore Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Swabhimana.

Speaking on “Citizen centric performance budgeting,” Mr. Thomas said the present system of line item/programme budgeting did not involve citizens. It did not indicate the progress made for the money spent on several programmes. The performance reports of various departments of the BBMP were no different. “If something is spent on health it does not indicate what has been achieved,” he said.

Mr. Thomas said introduction of proper performance budgeting would help in bringing financial control over the money received by the BBMP and also ensure fiscal discipline.

It would facilitate managing operations to ensure efficiency and also set budget priorities.

With this system of budgeting “resistance to payment of more tax will reduce”, he said and added that people had been generally apprehensive about the way the tax collected by the municipal authorities was being utilised.

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