Communal Programming-Budgeting: The Pathway to the Country’s Development

Abstract

Poor management and misallocation of public finances have been one of the major challenges to the development of Burundi. From the colonial period till recently, the country adopted the traditional budget, which focused on inputs such as resources rather than on outputs such as program outcomes. This system promoted corruption, embezzlement, and money laundering, and overall, it slowed the economic development of the community and the country as a whole. Thus, the introduction of the new reforms in public finance spending that promote program-based budgets initiated in recent years to accelerate economic development is being challenged by both local and national decision makers. The practice of gaming these reforms takes different aspects, such as planning activities that are budget consuming without clear outcomes, overpricing the costs of activities, and increasing the numbers of meetings, outstation missions, seminars, workshops, per diems, etc. And as a result, we argue that these communal plans for community developments cannot contribute either to developing local communities nor can they lead to the achievement of objectives of national development plans such as the National Development Plan (PND2018-2027) and the Burundi Vision 2040 as an emerging country and 2060 as a developed country due to poor planning and disguised resistance to changing attitudes in the public sector.