Appraisal of Budgetary System in the Public Sector

Chapter One of Appraisal of Budgetary System in the Public Sector

INTRODUCTION

 Background to the Study

Planning and control are major activities of management in all organization and budgets are central to the process of planning and control. Budgeting and budgetary control both at management and operational level look at the future lay down what had to be achieved while control checks whether or not the plans are realized and put into effect corrective measure where deviation or short or short fall is occurring-Budgeting control is not a new technique. It has a profit as the motivating force to known how performance increases. Budgetary control is therefore the system of management control and accounting in which all the operations are forecasted and planned in advances to the extent possible and the actual result compared with the forecasted and planned ones.

In brief it is a system to assist management in the allocation of responsibility and authority, to provide it with aid for making, estimating and planning for the future  and to facilitate the analysis of the between estimated and actual performance.

In order that budgetary control may function effectively, it is necessary that the concern should develop proper basis of measurement or standard with which to evaluate the efficiency of operations a system of standard costing.

Beside this, the organization of the concern should be so integrated that all lines of authority and responsibility are laid, allocated and defined. This is essential since the system of budgetary control postulate separation of functions and division of responsibilities and thus requires that the organization shall be in such be planned in such a manner that everyone from the managing director down to the shop foreman will have his duties properly defined.

Budgetary control is an important aspect of financial planning and control. If properly applied it will help in keeping operation and production of good and service in line with plans. When establishing budgets, standard must be used and it is this standard that will serve as a yard stick for measuring actual result. This in effect means that budgetary control system is operated simultaneously with system of standard costing because both systems are inter-related.

It is important that budgetary control reports are consistent with the assigned responsibility of each level of the organization and that a budget holder is only held responsible for their incurrence. Thus, if responsibility accounting is to be controllable and uncontrollable. Responsibility Accounting is a system of accounting in which cost and revenue are analyzed in accordance with areas of personal responsibility accounting. Once the plans for the department have been agreed and embodied in a budget, the budgetary control process begins.

A well established and fully understood system of budgetary control also facilitates the application of the principle of management by objective. In that sense, efforts are made to see that those who would implement the budgets understand what their goals are, what actions contribute to the achievement of these goals and when they have been accomplished.

This is objective can only be achieved when both the management and staff participation and full Co-operation are ensured so that strict adherence to management policy is achieved. Managers should be made to see that budget are measure of standard which be seen as a motivational factors.

Budgetary control system serve as a control mechanism which harmonizes both individual and group objectives with be organization objectives with be organization objective to ensure Co-operation of management and staff which in turn bring about utmost success of control.

Brown and Howard (1984) as cited in Mohammed (2011) stressed that organizational goals or objectives to be achieved there must be an efficient budgetary control system.

They enumerated the point that budgetary control is not only an accounting excise but a fool of management at all levels.

The most important of all uses of budgetary control is its motivational aspect that is bought but by the involvement of lower and middle management with the preparation of budgets which performance can be judged.

Therefore, for the effective and efficient utilization of an organization resources and objection for such organization to be achieved, the executives need to fully understand the essentials of budgetary control.

Statement of the Problem

Nigeria Public Sector as a whole has not grown remarkably over the years due to factors such as dummy budgetary control, neglect by the sector from over dependence on crude oil, collapsing infrastructure among others.

Although, the Nigeria Government maintains that the industry is the main is the main instrument for rapid growth structural change and self sufficiency, it had however unwillingly pursued policies which had impaired the performance of same industry (Akintoye 2008) as cited in (Mohammed 2011). Therefore, the problems which this write-up identified and aimed at proffering solution to are;

1. Lack of adequate and realistic data for proper budgetary control.
2. Lack of financial planning and control Public sector parastatals.
3. The non-challant attitude being paid to budgetary control in the Public sector.

Objectives of the Study

The main objective of this study is to look into how the Public sectorcompanies apply the techniques control in their daily activities and its possible contributions to the overall performance of the company. For this objective to be realistic, attention would be paid to the followings;

1. To know how budgetary control can enhance public sector performance.
2. To identify the problem being encountered in the implementation of these control.
3. To suggest possible solution to problems/challenges on implementation of budgetary control.
4. To identify different human aspect of budgetary control.