Acta academica karviniensia 2015, 15(4):80-88 | DOI: 10.25142/aak.2015.044

MUNICIPAL BUDGET OUTLOOKS: ARE THEY REALLY UTILISED?

Lucie Sedmihradská

University of Economics, Faculty of Finance and Accounting, nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Praha 3, Email:sedmih@vse.cz

The objective of the paper is to evaluate the role which the multi-year budget outlook has in the budgetary process and to explore its usage in the Czech municipalities. The analysis is based on the published multi-year budget outlooks in 131 Czech towns with more than 10 thousand inhabitants and two case studies. Compilation of the multi-year budget outlook in the Czech Republic is compulsory and its legal regulation allows a broad range of existing practice. Only about a half of the towns publishes a valid multi-year budget outlook on the Internet. The time span of the documents is evenly distributed between two to five years and the detail differs considerably. While four towns prepare the whole budget in a multiannual perspective, about a third of the multi-year budget outlooks contains only the major types of revenue and expenditure. More than one quarter of the published multi-year budget outlooks is prepared by external consultants. The lack of regular update and high uncertainty about future revenue significantly limit the information value of the document.

Keywords: budgetary process, fiscal transparency, local government, multi-year budget outlook

JEL classification: H72

Received: October 14, 2015; Accepted: March 23, 2016; Published: December 30, 2015  Show citation