Punjab Budget Forecast Tool

Introduction

The annual budgets of the federal and provincial governments are presented at the start of every financial year. Through the budgets and related documents, the government briefs the public about its performances, its economic agenda in the near term and the detailed breakup of its planned expenditure, and the sources of financing the expenditure in the new financial year. Despite their importance, budgets are inscrutable to most people. This forecasting tool for the Punjab budget is a continuation of our effort at IDEAS to make the budget more accessible to students of economics and others with an interest in public finance. It will also help policy makers in simulating various scenarios by altering the underlying assumptions of the forecasting model

In this tool, users can select from three visualizations (Revenue, Expenditure and Balance). Users can also change economic assumptions (through slider and numeric inputs) to observe the effect of those changes reflected in the Revenue, Expenditure and Balance visualizations. Assumptions can be filtered through the ‘Year’ and the ‘Category’ buttons. For an in depth theoretical understanding of the tool, we highly recommend users to review the research paper or the abridged methodology. A video tutorial to guide users about the functionality of the tool can also be found here.