The Budget 

The Budget is an annual plan for central government finances and financial administration. It outlines the central government’s expenditure and revenue for the coming year, along with decisions on the amount of debt to be taken to cover any deficit.

In the autumn, the Government submits its budget proposal for the next year to Parliament, which decides on the use of central government funds.

If the revenue and expenditure estimates change over the course of the year, the Government submits a supplementary budget proposal to Parliament. The supplementary budget proposal takes into account the changes in the use of central government funds.

General Government Fiscal Plan

The General Government Fiscal Plan outlines the use of central government and other public sector funds. It covers the finances of the central government, wellbeing services counties and municipalities, employment pension schemes and social security funds. The General Government Fiscal Plan is drawn up once a year for four years at a time.

The plan includes a decision on spending limits, which sets a cap for most of the central government budget expenditure. The Government usually discusses the General Government Fiscal Plan in its spring meeting, which is commonly referred to as the spending limits discussion.

How the Budget is prepared 

The Budget is drawn up each year as follows:

1. The ministries submit their spending proposals to the Ministry of Finance in January.
2. Based on the ministries' proposals, the Ministry of Finance draws up its proposal for the central government spending limits.
3. The Government negotiates on the General Government Fiscal Plan and spending limits in its spending limits discussion in March-April. Once the negotiations are complete, the General Government Fiscal Plan is discussed by the Ministerial Finance Committee and by the Government in plenary session and is published online.
4. The concrete preparation of the Budget begins once the ministries start working on the budget proposals for their administrative branches based on the General Government Fiscal Plan and guidelines from the Ministry of Finance. Each ministry puts together a budget proposal for its administrative branch. The proposals are submitted to the Ministry of Finance in May.
5. The Ministry of Finance discusses the budget proposals. The Minister of Finance decides on the Ministry of Finance’s budget proposal and submits the proposal to the ministries in July-August.
6. The Government discusses the proposal in its budget session in August-September. In the budget session, the Government decides on and approves the contents of the budget proposal for the coming year.
7. The Ministry of Finance finalises the budget proposal, after which it is approved by the Government in plenary session. After this, the budget proposal is submitted to Parliament for consideration and is published online.
8. The Finance Committee in Parliament reviews the budget proposal and issues its own report on it. Parliament then holds a discussion on the content of the Budget. Finally, Parliament adopts the Budget in a plenary session in December.