ABSTRACT
Budgeting and planning should be means of correcting errors, not producing them. Both the extensive literature on planning and the scanty material on budgeting in these countries varied in coverage and quality. There was nothing solid about budgeting at all, and there were no substantial accounts of how expenditures were determined in any country. Forms of planning and budgeting in poor countries are essentially alike, partly because they are copied from Soviet, European, and (in a few instances) American models and partly because they have evolved in response to similar environmental forces. Government is part of the environment of uncertainty and poverty. It also acts on that environment. But governments have not achieved mastery yet; that is part of what it means to be poor. To no one's surprise, poor societies have poor governments. Rulers may be firmly entrenched but they lack ability either to mobilize sufficient resources or to allocate them productively, or both.
