Forecasting Government Revenue and Spending

This ongoing project is an exercise in forecasting provincial governments’ revenues, spending and fiscal deficit for FY2013/14 to FY2019/20. The aim of this project is to make the provincial budgets more intelligible and to develop insights into the constituents of the provincial budget for students of economics and others with an interest in public finance but who find the budgets inscrutable.

The paper: ‘A forecasting Model of Punjab Revenue and Spending’, provides details of the methodology, the various constituents of revenue and spending and the forecasts for Punjab. It is accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation and an excel-based forecasting tool for Punjab. The former provides a quick overview of the methodology, and the latter is a learning tool for students but it should also assist policy makers in simulating alternative scenarios by altering the assumptions that underlie the forecasting model.

PowerPoint presentations and excel-based forecasting tools are being developed for other provinces using the same methodological framework as discussed in detail in the Punjab paper and outlined in the PowerPoint presentation.

Interactives

Forecasting Tool for Punjab Revenue and Spending

The Budget Forecasting Tool was launched in August 2019. The web-based version is based on an Excel-based Forecasting Tool developed by Umbreen Fatima, former Research Associate, IDEAS. The original model for this forecasting tool was developed by Dr. Anjum Nasim, Senior Research Fellow and co-founder IDEAS, in his paper ‘A Forecasting Model of Punjab Revenue and Spending’. The web-based tool has been developed by the team at Plotree Info Design.