UAE plans a big makeover with regard to its federal budget, like releasing budgets every three years instead of yearly one at present and adopting a “zero-based budgeting” format, reported Reuters. The first three-year budget would run from 2011 to 2013, and the first draft of the plan would be ready by November this year, the country’s Ministry of Finance said.
Zero-based budgeting is useful for rapidly growing GDP and (the) need for large-scale infrastructure development, commented experts. Under zero-based budgeting, individual departments would have to build each three-year budget from the ground up, including approving all expenditures rather than just increases in expenditures.
The UAE, currently, uses an incremental budgeting process. Last year, the UAE federal government said it raised 2009 state expenditure by 21 per cent to Dh42.2 billion ($11.49 billion) in a balanced budget.
