Budgeting and public expenditures

Best practice principles support policy-makers in designing and implementing effective budgetary policies.

Country reviews provide a comprehensive overview of the budget process in the jurisdiction under examination to evaluate its experiences and provide policy recommendations in the light of international best practices.

Spending Trends offers an overview of the massive public spending that underpinned economic and financial support packages implemented by countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This helps inform future reallocations and support countries as they plan their long term-recovery.

Our databases provide budget practitioners, academics and civil society with a unique and comprehensive source to compare and contrast national budgeting and financial management practices across OECD member countries.

Our work with parliaments and independent fiscal institutions (IFIs) supports democratic oversight of the budget. The budget process allows citizens and their representatives in parliament to provide input on government priorities and hold governments to account. IFIs enrich the public debate with non-partisan analysis of economic and fiscal policies.

We provide a key forum for governments to coordinate policies that ensure good fiscal management and transparent and accountable reporting on public finances.

Performance budgeting is the systematic use of performance information to inform budget decisions, with the aim to improve the quality of public policies.

Green budgeting uses the tools of budgetary policy-making to help achieve environmental goals. This includes assessing the environmental impacts of budgetary and fiscal policies and evaluating their consistency. The OECD Paris Collaborative supports countries delivering their national and international commitments.

Budget Transparency supports better quality fiscal outcomes, enhances accountability and supports integrity in the use of public funds. It strengthens inclusiveness and public trust. The "OECD Best Practices for Budget Transparency" is a reference tool for governments to improve transparency.

Ensuring fiscal sustainability and resilience of public health systems while preserving access and quality is a shared challenge for budget and health officials. We provide support to Ministries of Finance and Ministries of Health to achieve this goal.

Performance monitoring and evaluation provide robust evidence on the design, implementation or results of policies. M&E enables governments to understand what policies work, why and for whom, improve the quality of expenditure, optimise service delivery and increase policy transparency.

Spending reviews analyse the stock of existing expenditure and are used by governments during the budget process to develop, assess, recommend and adopt policies. They enable governments to manage their aggregate expenditure levels and align them with their priorities while improving policy effectiveness.

Providing policy analysis and statistical underpinnings on the relationships between national and subnational governments, and its impact on efficiency, equity and macroeconomic stability.

Gender equality is a fundamental human right. Gender budgeting is a way for governments to promote gender equality through the budget process. It can be a particularly powerful tool to promote women labour market participation, which can have a great overall economic impact.

An MTEF integrates policy objectives and budgeting by aligning the aggregate fiscal forecast and detailed medium-term budget estimates of existing policies. It brings together top-down and bottom-up approaches to identify actual resource allocations.

The Public Interest Committee is the oversight body for the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB), ensuring that the public interest is served by IPSASB in its standard setting activities.