The impact of budget reforms on the quality of budget management in Nigeria

Abstract

Budget management reforms were the major areas of the Nigeria public service reforms embarked upon since the inception of civilian administration in 1999. The major objective was to enhance budget discipline among others. This was predicated on the theoretical considerations that improving the process and management of budgeting through reforms would ultimately translate into improved budgetary outcome. This paper empirically investigated the impact of budget reforms on the quality of budget management in Nigeria. The Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) form the proxies for budget reforms while budget discipline (BDISC) and fiscal discipline (FDISC) were used as proxies for the quality of budgeting. Historical time series data representing 7years before and 7 years after the adoption of MTEF, and 5 years before and 5 years after the enactment of FRA were collect and analysed using the pre-test/post-test design of a Paired Sample Ttest. The result favoured our initial proposition that budget reforms (MTEF and FRA) had not significantly impacted on the quality of budget management (BDISC and FDISC) in Nigeria. It was therefore recommended that government should provide the leadership and political will not only to enforce the provisions of FRA, MTEF and other reforms, but to sanction those that short circuit the system to their advantage. This will go a long way to enhance compliance with the reforms and bring about the expected improvement in the quality of the nation's budget management.