Part III Assessing resources Chapter 10: Analysing public budgets KEY QUESTIONS • Why is it important to analyse public budgets from a human rights perspective? • What analytical tools can we use to evaluate the allocations made in a government’s budget? • At what points in the budget cycle can we engage in the process of determining resource allocations? INTRODUCTION If we are concerned that inadequate resources appear to have been allocated to the fulfilment of the right or rights we are monitoring, our first question has to be: How much money has been allocated? To answer this, we need to analyse the budget. Public budgets can be analysed from various perspectives. This chapter explains why it is important to evaluate how resources are allocated from a human rights perspective and introduces a range of basic budget analysis techniques, which can be used to measure different human rights norms. It also discusses the budget cycle and ways to determine if the budget process is open and transparent. 10.1. HOW ARE RESOURCES ALLOCATED? Government really has no money of its own. In the budget – in outlining its plans for spending money – it is explaining how it is going to spend money that belongs to the public. In a democratic society, citizens give the government a mandate via their votes. Politicians are obliged to translate that mandate into policies and plans that are, in part, reflected in the budget … No government in the world has infinite public resources at its disposal. At the same time, there is a boundless array of needs to be met through public expenditure. The budget thus always incorporates trade-offs between different spending priorities and includes value judgments about which services, and whose interests, are most important. The budget is clearly a political and contestable document. Trevor Manuel, South African Minister of Finance, 1998 Republic of South Africa Budget Review The budget is the key policy document prepared by a government. To understand the importance of the budget, consider the quote above from the former South African Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel. As he highlights, the budget is a “political and contestable document” that reflects priorities about which services and whose interests are most important. For this reason, it is a document that should be the subject of human rights assessment. The budget has three components: revenue (discussed further in Chapter 11), expenditure and surplus or deficit (the difference between revenue and expenditure). It reveals how much money a government intends to raise (revenue), from whom (sources) and how it will be spent (expenditure). Chapter 10: Analysing public budgets | 103