April 2017

Expenditure Assessment Tool

This manual presents the Expenditure Assessment Tool (EAT), a tool which assists in the assessment of public expenditures for any given country.


Author

Candice Y Liu and Mercedes Garcia-Escribano


Publisher

International Monetary Fund (IMF)


Document Type

Tools and guidelines


Building Block

Assessment and diagnostics


Tags

#PublicExpenditure #FiscalPolicy #PublicFinancialManagement

Tools and guidelines

2017

Expenditure Assessment Tool

The Expenditure Assessment Tool (EAT) uses the commonly available software program Microsoft Excel and has been designed by the Expenditure Policy Division at the Fiscal Affairs Department at IMF. The evaluation is done through benchmarking of spending—levels, composition and outcomes—against regional and income comparators. The focus is on both the economic and functional classification of expenditures.

The information EAT provides can be very useful in the evaluation of government spending and in the identification of areas where there may be room to increase spending efficiency or rationalise spending.