Citizen's Budget. VERDICT: PROMISE KEPT

The first commitment we will review is #1.4 Produce an annual Citizen's Budget. This is an easy one! The Ministry of Finance (MoF) gets a promise kept on publishing an easy to understand citizens budget on their website. I recommend all of you who haven't read through the 2011/2012 Citizen's Budget to have a look and to make it a habit to read every citizens budget released from now on, after all it is specifically made for us. The citizens budget summarizes the main points from the actual budget and presents it in a more user-friendly manner with graphs, figures and flow diagrams (even an occasional comic strip for added effect!). For the more curious, one can always go back to the actual budget document also found on the MoF's website to get extra information which may have been left out of the citizen's budget. One major criticism however, is not to do with the actual citizens budget, but the Ministry's website which is usually unavailable thus making it difficult to access the budget. We would like to strongly recommend that the MoF take urgent steps to stabilize their website.

Why is it so important to understand the budget you might ask? Well, firstly, the budget is an early indication of whether commitments made by the government are likely to be carried out. For example, if we are promised an increase in investment in education, this will be reflected in the budget and the amount can easily compared to the previous year's budget to determine how much more is going to be spent. Ofcourse, there is no guarantee that money will be spent but nonetheless a good first start.

Secondly, the budget gives an indication of how government aims to fund all the expenses that will arise during the year. Raising revenue is a very important activity and if not done correctly results in ballooning of the national debt and an increase in interest payments over the coming years. A recent manifestation of this problem can be seen in many of the countries in the European Union most notably Greece and Spain.

Some points of interest in the Citizen's Budget 2011/2012:

• The total revenue the government must raise is Tsh 13,526 billion to cover all its expected expenses during the year. Out of this, the budget deficit (or the amount that must be sourced externally) is Tsh 5,194.3 billion which represents 38.4% of the entire budget, a relatively high figure. 
• Infrastructure (rail, road and airport) will cost the government 20.6% of the total expenditure or Tsh 2.68 trillion, an increase of 85% from the 2010/11 budget year. It will be interesting to see what percentage of this amount actually gets used as in past budgets only about 60% has been utilised. As we all know, infrastructure in Tanzania is in dire need of an upgrade and hopefully this massive investment will go a long way in improving the situation.

**Update (21/11/2012) The 2012/13 Citizens Budget has been released, and can be accessed here.