| dc.description.abstract | This study sought to establish the various relationships existing
between the budget allocation in any year and each of the following
variables:
(i) The budget request for year t
(ii) The budget allocation in year t-l' and
(iii) The actual expenditure in year t- 1·
.in a bid to establish the best predictor of any year's
budget allocation.
For the research, data from forty University of Nairobi (UON)
departments were gathered and a series of simple regression analysis
run using the budget allocation as the criterion variable and each
of the variables (i) to (iii) as the predictor variables.
It was found out that budgeting in the UON is a hierarchical process
which starts at the University departments with departmental requests
and ends up in Parliament with the approved estimates.
Evidence gathered from the data analysis suggests that each of the
three predictor variables is highly related to the budget allocation
in any year. It specifically, provides evidence to indicate that
the budget requests that are sent by the UON to the Treasury through
the Ministry of Education, conforms to a large extent, to the guidelines
stipulated by the Treasury such that any subsequent revisions
are minimal. For this reason, budget requests at this level, tend to
act as good indicators of what the budget allocations will be, although
they need not necessarily reflect departmental needs.
Evidence also suggests that the vote head does appear to have an
effect on the strength of the relationship between the budget allocation
as the criterion variable and each of the predictor variables. In
this regard, it was found to be the Equipment and Furniture vote which
had the greatest effect, i.e. it was distinctly different from the
other votes.
Finally, the findings of this research should be understood and
evaluated in light of the limitations of the study, which were mainly
twofold. First, the study restricted itself to only a subset of the
variables which may have an effect on the budget allocation in any
year. Secondly, there were several cases of missing data | en |
