CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

The origin of budgeting could be traced to the cradle of civilization where Joseph according to the Bible (Genesis 41:33-36) made a forecast (budget) of corn supplies and planned Pharoah's investment and consumption policy in light of it budget was used in England as early as the eighteenth century to control the King's power of taxation which provided the revenues and to control governmental expenditures. The budget principles of supply as well as the use of funds is still fully recognized in modern business budgeting.

The idea of government budgeting were brought into United States and carried by English Immigrants. According to Horngreen and Foster (1987), Budgeting system are more common in large companies, where formalized                    techniques often serve management. Still, small concerns also use budget.          All organizations whether incorporated or unincorporated, public or private, religion or traditional, have some objectives/or goals which it aims to achieve. The objectives could be the maximization of profits or rendering of services.   The realization of an organization's objective requires the acquisition and utilization of both human and material resources. To achieve these objectives, the organization tries to economize resources and change the course or means of achieving its pre-determined goals. With these resources, the organization determines the most effective way of achieving its goals. Goals optimization is achieved only by the properly planned use of available resources when the different activities are efficiently co-ordinated and the various decisions are policy oriented or controlled.

Modem religious organizations require the use of some technique in the formulation and adoption of planned and defined systems include budgeting variance analysis, and budgetary control. The process of setting goals or objectives to be achieved in some future time and determining how these goals are to be reached is described as planning, translating this planning into religion targets can be described as budgeting in religious organization.

        According to Terry Lucey (1996) preparing a short term and detailed plan of activities of an organization and so converting the strategic long term plan into action. The degree of importance attached to this plan and the efforts made in controlling the deviation from the planned performance differs among business organizations. A budget can be defined as a quantitative financial statement showing estimated incomes and expenditures of an organization for a specified period of time. It is a predetermined statement of management policy during a given period which provides a standard for comparison with results actually achieved.

        The process of establishing a budget is known as budgeting while the process of assigning responsibilities for achievement of the budget, measuring actual performance and comparing it with the planned performance is known as budgetary control.

        Consequently, budgetary control is a management function which includes the preparation of budget and establishing responsibility, comparing actual performance with that budgeted and acting upon result to achieve the described goal.

        The purpose of control is to ensure t at operation and performance conforms to plans. The control aspect of budgetary activities is a management function which involves taking action on adverse variance that are controlled.

According to Pogue (1989), budget will control nothing as it is not on itself a control mechanism but a yardstick by which actual results can be compared as and when they occur and thus provide management with an aid to control cost. Budgetary control therefore acts as guard on the executive capacity by controlling their scope of expenditure. In a religious organization, it helps the budget committee or church committee to control church expenditure. It aims at realistic approach to project by management of an organization.    Non profit making organization attached much importance to budgeting. Thus budget is being controlled in each non profit making organization. Like every other organization the realization of the budget objective in Non profit making organization depends on the effective control of management on the budget.

1.2    STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

        This research work is encouraged to help in highlighting the problems that militate against the application and effective utilization of budgeting and budgetary controls of Catholic Church in Delta State Asaba in Particular.

Specifically, the following problems are addressed:

(1)         The parish was unable to accomplish budget goals.

(2)         There were variances between budgeted and actual performance in the parish.

(3)         The committee members were unable to exercise control on the budget system because of lack of adequate experience.

(4)         Even formulating master budget at parish level had been a problem and delayed previous year’s budgets.

(5)         The parish was unable to monitor both compliance with and deviation from budget's target.

1.3         OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

        Budgets are essentially forward looking and provide the yardstick for the purposes of comparison. It is a means to an end and not an end itself; hence it covers the area of responsibility of one specified person so that his performance can be measured at the end of budget period.

These are the objectives of this study:

(a)          To determine why the parish was unable to accomplish budget goals

(b)          To find why there was variance between budgeted and actual performance in the parish

(c)           To examine whether lack of experience contributed to committee inefficiency in terms of budgetary control.

(d)          To ascertain why there has been delay in formulation of budget.

(e)           To find out why the parish was unable to monitor deviation from budget target.

1.4   RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following research questions have been formulated to help the researcher in data collection. They are:

(1)         What are the problems of budgeting in your organization?

(2)         To what extent does budget serve as an effective tool of     planning in your parish?

(3)         To what extent do you think this parish was unable                                         to accomplish her budget goals?

(4)         What are the causes of variances in your parish budget?

(5)         To what extent does your parish analyze the budget variances?

(6)         To what-extent are budgets use is for controlling in his parish?

(7)         To what extent are committee members educated on the budgetary control system?

(8)         What factor do you take into consideration in allocating cost?

(9)         To what extent are deviations from budgetary targets monitored?

(10)     To what extent does budgetary control aid your parish in decision making?

1.5     STATEMENT OF HYPOTHESIS    

        A hypothesis is defined as a proposition put forward as a basis for reasoning a supposition formulated data and presented as a temporary explanation in order to establish a basis for future research, produced data is accepted while the other one is rejected after a statistical analysis of the data.

In this study, the researcher worked with these hypotheses:

H01: Budgets are not effective means of planning.

H1:     Budgets are effective tool of planning.

H02:    Catholic Churches in Delta State

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