Executive's Budget Proposal

The Executive’s Budget Proposal is the government’s major statement on fiscal issues for the budget year that is about to begin. This document includes detailed revenue, expenditure, and debt estimates; macroeconomic assumptions, historical and multi-year budget data; and public policy information. The EBP is one of the most important policy documents that a country issues each year, for it is through the budget that governments translate many of their key policy goals into action. The nature of the Executive’s Budget Proposal can vary from country to country; sometimes it is a single document, and sometimes it is a collection of multiple documents. It is important that the Executive’s Budget Proposal is transparent because its proposals determine revenues (how much citizens pay in taxes), expenditures (how government resources are distributed among citizens), and debt (how much of the cost of government is borne by current or future generations). To allow for an informed public and legislative discussion on the budget, best practice calls for the executive to provide a full explanation of its taxation, spending, and borrowing plans well in advance of its enactment.

Assessing the public availability of the EBP
Publicly available budget documents are defined as those documents that are published on the website of the public authority issuing the document within the time frame specified in the OBS methodology and that all citizens are able to obtain free of charge. (See the Open Budget Survey Guidelines on Public Availability of Budget Documents.) This is a change from previous rounds of the Open Budget Survey: now at minimum documents must be made available on the Internet and free of charge to be considered publicly available.

The OBS methodology requires that for an EBP to be considered publicly available, it must be made available to the public while the legislature is still considering it and before the legislature approves (enacts) it. If the EBP is not released to the public before the legislature approves (enacts) it, option “d” applies. Option “d” should also be chosen for documents that are produced for internal purposes only (that is, produced but never released to the public) or are not produced at all. Some governments may publish budget documents further in advance than the latest possible dates outlined above. In these instances, researchers should choose options “a” or “b,” depending on the date of publication identified for the EBP.

The OBS definition of an Executive’s Budget Proposal is a document(s) that (i) the executive submits to the legislature as a formal part of the budget approval process and (ii) the legislature either approves or on which it approves proposed amendments. The OBS will treat the Executive’s Budget Proposal as “Not Produced,” in the following cases:
 * The executive does not submit the draft budget to the legislature; or
 * The legislature receives the draft budget but does not approve it or does not approve recommendations on the draft budget;
 * The legislature rejects the draft budget submitted by the executive, but the executive implements it without legislative approval; or
 * There is no legislature, or the legislature has been dissolved.

See Question EBP-2 for more information.

Questions in the OBS on the EBP

 * Questions on the EBP in the OBS