Determinants of Budget utilization in public Administration offices: A case study of Dawuro zone, South Western Ethiopian Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the determinants of budget utilization in public administration offices; a case study of Dawuro zone, SWR, Ethiopia. To accomplish this objective the researcher adopted a descriptive type of research. The study was used both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The study was conducted at three (3) Woredas, one city administration and zone finance and economic development office. The study used simple random sampling to select budget holder financial offices and the study purposively selected budget related employees from selected Woredas, city administration and zone finance office & also the study finally used proportionate stratified random sampling to select respondents from sampled Woredas and city administrations based on regular task they perform. The study used 183 employees that were directly related to budget issues. The study used both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected through open and close ended questionnaire and Secondary data was gathered from reviewing of audited annul financial reports of 2011-2015EC (2019-2023). All collected data was analyzed by using both descriptive, multiple linear regression models and ANOVA testing. The collected data was, edited, cleaned, and coded; and then SPSS Version26 was used to analyze the data. For this study, five independent variables were identified including, Auditing and monitoring, Public procurement, Tax collection capacity, Government policy and Inflation rate. Therefore; based on output of SPSS the variables including Auditing and monitoring , Public procurement , Tax collection capacity and Government policy’s affects budget utilization significantly at p<0.05but Inflation rate affects budget utilization insignificantly at p>0.05. Then the researcher recommended that Dawuro zone public administration offices should understand the contributions of these four variables to budget utilization in public finance offices.