Workshop on City Budget Portal
March 2023
Local budgets are strategic documents that help to plan and determine a city’s futuristic vision. In India, municipal budgeting process is manual, while local budgets are prepared lengthy documents prepared in local languages. The Government of India (GOI) launched the formulation of National Accounting Manual – a generic framework and mandate which details out budgeting and accounting guidelines for cities. However, preliminary assessment through desk-based research suggests that many small and medium cities across India don’t follow the uniform practice of budgeting. The City Budget Portal is a budget software which helps cities to prepare municipal budgets in local languages. The portal allows municipalities to prepare uniform, re-casted, readable, digitised budgets through a single browser-based system which aligns with the National Accounting Manual by the Government of India. CWAS Team did a capacity building and training workshop with the Directorate of Municipal Administration (DMA), Maharashtra for pilot cities to operate the city budget portal. The approach has helped these cities in preparing budget brief reports and enhanced budget making process through driven decisions, adequate allocation and planning of financial resources to improve city services.
