Public Budgeting and Policy Analysis

• Demonstrate knowledge of the core terms and concepts in public budgeting
• Apply course material concerning the major themes in public budgeting
• Demonstrate the ability to comprehend, analyze, and contextualize budget materials, including public and non-profit budgets, financial plans, and supporting material
• Apply course material to current fiscal affairs facing governments and non-profits
• Demonstrate an understanding of budget execution
• Prepare and communicate the contents of a public budget
• Explain how and why public budgeting is much more than the collecting and managing of numbers that represent how tax dollars will be collected, moneys borrowed, and spent.
• Explain how and why the budgeting process can be used a communication tool in connecting the elected with the populace.
• Explain how and why the public budgeting process can be a lever aligning problems, politics and solutions.
• Explain how and why the public budgeting process can launch the public sector down the path of performance management. 

• Practitioners, consisting of central, state/provincial, and local/municipal government officials dealing with public finance and fiscal policy, private sector providers of public infrastructure and services, and community-based development groups.
• Academic community, consisting of students who would like to enter the field of public finance, as well as scholars and faculty doing research and teaching in this field.
• Citizens, consisting of members of the general public

Interpret Budgets within a Specific Sector

• Budgeting in the public sector
• Role and purpose of budgets in a specific sector according to legislation
• Principals of budgeting in terms of application
• Components of a budget within a specific sector as per legislation

Evaluate Budget Formats and Approaches to Budgeting

• Budgeting formats – Introduction
• Range of budget formats
• Budget costing approaches

Manage Data for Preparing a Budget

• Principles and goals of the fiscal framework
• Budgetary requirement
• Financial analysis of the fiscal framework
• Compile information for a budget utilising policy, strategic and performance plans
• Importance of monitoring and evaluation
• Medium term expenditure guidelines

Estimate Budget Using Prescribed Formats

• Annual budget according to appropriate approaches and prescribed formats
• Cash flow estimation

Prepare Motivation for Budgetary Requests

• Motivation for budgetary request
• Standard Chart of Accounts (SCoA)
• Eight segments of SCoA
• Item segment classification of revenue (receipts)
• Item segment classification of expenditure (payments)

Prepare Budget Based on Approved Amounts

• Budget request to role players
• Basic steps required to finalise budget allocation
• Prepared and finalise budgets in accordance with organisation practices and principles

The Role and Size of the Public Sector

• Economic Rationale for Public Sector Interventions:
• Market Efficiency and Market Failure, Distributional Concerns
• The Nature and Magnitude of Public Sector Interventions:
• Defining the Responsibilities and Measuring the Size of the Public Sector
• Understanding a Nation’s Fiscal Architecture:
• Building Appropriate Revenue and Expenditure Systems, Government Failure

Public Expenditure Policy

• Megaprojects
• Government Social Protection Policies
• Public Sector Production and Provision and Private Sector Participation/Public-Private
• Partnerships in Production and Provision (PSP/PPP)

Public Resource Mobilization

• Economics of Taxation
• Taxation of Income and Wealth
• Taxation of Consumption
• Taxation and the Environment, Taxation and Natural Resources
• Tax Incentives
• Tax Compliance and Enforcement, Tax Reform
• User Charges

Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations and Local Government Finance

• Fiscal Federalism and Fiscal Decentralization
• Resource Transfers and Own Source Revenue
• Local Government Debt Financing