Excellent Question.

1. A budget is an itemized summary of probable expenses and income for a given period. Or, you may prefer to think of it as a way to keep from running out of money before you run out of month! No matter how you refer to it, its a tool to help you prioritize your spending and manage your moneyno matter how much or how little you have.

2. The Budget process is a massive exercise. The exercise has different stages and each stage kicks off at a different stage of Budget making process.

The two sides of the Budget

Like our family budget, the nation's General Budget has two major parts: Revenue and Expenditure.

Assessing the revenues from different central taxes is the primary function of the Department of Revenue and the expenditure estimates for the current and the next year for various expenditure heads are assessed by the Department of Expenditure. The Department of Expenditure also assesses the resources of the public sector undertakings (PSUs).

T ...more