12.
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Officers are required to forecast their financial requirements in
accordance with the programmes and services identified under the
Development Plan. (Hence, in education, an activity might be identified
in Appendix II, for example, as "Expansion and Development of Government
Secondary Schools: Programme C4, Senior Secondary and Tertiary Education".)
4.15 In addition the Forecast is used as a tool in determining the
financial resources to be made available to departments in the succeeding
financial year. On receipt of the returns, the Finance Branch conducts
a detailed examination in consultation with departments and policy
branches, ensuring that the activities are entered in the correct appendices
and that the levels and timing of expenditure envisaged are realistic.
Following examination of the returns, each Controlling Officer is given
a maximum figure (the provisional acceptable level of annually recurrent
expenditure) within which he will be expected to draw up his draft
Estimates for the next financial year. In normal circumstances this ·
figure is intended to provide for all activities identified in Appendices
I and II of the Forecast although, exceptionally, in a period of severe
financial stringency, it might prove necessary to restrain these below
the levels implied in Appendices I and II.
4.16
New activities entered in Appendix III of the Five Year Forecast
must be ranked by the Controlling Officer in accordance with the following
classification:
(a) Category I activities for which implementation is
considered essential or unavoidable;
(b) Category II activities for which implementation is
highly desirable and for which deferment would cause
serious inconvenience;
(c) Category III activities for which implementation is
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desirable and for which deferment would be inconvenient;