Programme budgeting for South African local authorities

Abstract

The scarcity of resources relative to social wants leads to the allocation function of economics, which in the private sector of the economy is accomplished through a market mechanism and in the public sector by means of government budgeting. One noteworthy feature in the history of public finance up to the twentieth century was its indifference to public expenditure problems in general and budgetary choice in particular. This factor, together with a growing popular demand for probity in public spending, led to the entrenchment of rigorous classification principles which satisfied that needs of accountability yet failed to provide a satisfactory framework for decision making and economic analysis.