Budgetary planning and control within the Ministry for Gozo : local practices and the EU dimension

Abstract

The Ministry for Gozo is responsible for coordinating the functions of government in Gozo with the aim of promoting the social, economic and cultural development of the island. The Ministry for Gozo is accountable to Parliament from which its specific powers are derived from and its responsibilities are to. The entity is constrained by the limited amount of funds provided annually by the Central Government. Thus, budgeting is of utmost importance in order to allocate the available public money in the most efficient way possible. Through Malta's membership within the European Union, the Ministry for Gozo became eligible for various EU Funds for the implementation of capital projects. This entailed a restructuring of the planning and control functions in pursuit of cost efficiency and effectiveness. The dissertation studies the current application of budgets and budgetary techniques within the Ministry for Gozo. The objective of the study is to analyze the budgeting system adopted for the annual national funding, in relation to the new budgeting techniques recently introduced for EU Funding purposes. The study showed that the EU budgeting techniques lead to a more efficient resource allocation and the researcher concludes that there are much more improvements that need to be made to the national budgeting system in order to enhance the utilization of public money.