ABSTRACT
Annual budgeting was, to most aid officials, an inescapable fact of life, which dominated policy discussion over the whole fiscal year from April to March. Budgeting was a feature of aid policy-making in most donor countries. All DAC members set aside yearly a portion of their central government’s budget for development assistance, the share of these allocations within the total budget ranging from less than 1 per cent to over 3 per cent. Most Western donors provided nearly all of their aid in this way, but some lessened their reliance on budgetary funds by using other sources. Likewise, there were procedures which affected the flexibility of appropriations, although, commonly, specified disbursements were voted yearly. In many countries, depending on budgetary tradition and the significance of aid in government priorities, there existed provisions for the carry-over of unspent funds, for forward budgeting in the form of advance commitments which could be charged to future budgets, or for indicative medium-term plans.1
