Budget Making Process in Urban Local Government: A Study of Saver Paurashava in Bangladesh

Abstract

Local government commenced with the beginning of ancient civilization for the welfare of people living in different civilizations in the world even before the emergence of national government. City government was started in ancient roman civilization. In the Indian sub-continent or particularly in this region the town government was developed through the hands of Mughal dynasty. In urban areas of Bangladesh, people depend a lot on the urban local government bodies for the daily basic amenities. The proper provision of services and continuous development of the local urban area largely depend on the preparation of an efficient budget at the beginning of the fiscal year and effective execution of it throughout the year. Most of the local government bodies in Bangladesh are in constant shortage of funds, on the other hand, it is seen in the research that the urban local government bodies specially, paurashava continuously prepare “surplus” budget. That means, there is inefficiency in the budget expenditure and implementation of budget. In fact, the overall development of the town or pourashava depends on the efficiency of the budget. Urbanization accelerates social development in terms of increasing higher literacy rate, improvement of quality of education, improving security issues and other social development factors that enhance our urban life comfortable. 70% respondents said that resources are used inefficiently and effective use is not ensured. 90% of politicians and officials think that paurashava should have more financial autonomy to extract local resources and allocation of funds. They have quoted that the influence of ministry in project selection should be minimized.

Keywords: Local Government, Service Delivery, Urbanization, Budget, Paurashva.