Municipal Budget - 2015

The budget is a planning instrument expressed in financial terms, setting out the spending and its applications as well as the revenue and its sources that the municipality will have over a given period, based on specific policies that translate into defined goals for the various areas of government.

Public budgets have four defining characteristics:

1. Anticipation: a budget is always a forecast that seeks to capture public sector operations over a future period, generally no longer than one year.
2. Quantification: it uses accounting language, classified according to a given order and set of criteria.
3. Binding force: the public sector is legally bound to comply with the budget. Budget authorisations are capped and cannot be exceeded, except under specific circumstances provided for by law. Revenue, on the other hand, may or may not exceed the estimated projections.
4. Regularity: the budget is drawn up and executed over set intervals of time. The budget period runs for one year.