ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the budget process in MIs, which has become the primary means of governmental control of the various institutions. However, budgets are often of poor quality, generally wasteful of resources and are rarely developed with real performance measurement in mind. Budgets are reviewed from a number of perspectives including: the planning cycle, the nature of the budget presentation, indicators used to justify spending and controls on activities. Whereas it is possible to compare organizations in the UN system and, to some extent, those in CGIAR through common budget and expenditure formats, this is not possible for other groups of organizations and it is postulated that more commonality in this area would lead to better governance, greater efficiency and more transparency.
