Does program budgeting help in creating an M&E system?
Yes. Program budgeting typically groups all activities with the same objective—such as achieving a specific improvement in infant nutrition—into a single program. This makes it much easier to estimate the total amount the government is spending to achieve the objective. It also facilitates both the measurement of the total volume of outputs of these related activities (that is, baseline measures) and the setting of performance targets. This clarity contrasts strongly with the more traditional, line-item budgeting, which identifies the total amount spent by an agency on all activities, with information only on the types of expenditure, such as salaries, office rents, telephones, travel, and so forth. Knowledge of how much is being spent to try to achieve each government objective is very useful for senior officials and budget analysts, as it helps them assess whether the amount of that spending is commensurate with the level of importance of the objective; this is essentially a results-
