5.1 Laws of Government Expenditure

The expenditure's legal spine (the five rules): The appropriation's supremacy: no spend without appropriation — the Appropriation Act's allocations as the spending's ONLY authorisation (the vote-and-spend discipline); The annuality: the budget's year (Shrawan-Ashar) — the unspent's lapse (and the limited carry-over faces); The procedure's code: the Economic Procedures Act 2074 — the release's discipline (the budget-release orders; the cash-flow's management), the transfer-and-virement rules, the accounts' closing; The procurement's discipline: the Public Procurement Act's machinery — the competitive bidding; the awards' controls (the public spending's contract law); The in-year controls: the ministries' reporting; the mid-year review; the surplus-and-transfer bills' corrections. The expenditure's own map: the recurrent (the salaries-and-services-and-debt-service) vs the capital (the infrastructure's build) — the recurrent's weight as the policy's chronic critique (Unit 1's review); the arrears' problem (the unpaid bills — the audit's perennial finding).