Budgets affect all of us. Businesses analyse budget policy in order to make investment decisions that impact on growth and employment. As citizens, we depend on the State to provide crucial services and infrastructure. Whether new roads will be built, whether our children will have schools to go to and whether clinics can adequately cater for the health care needs of the population depends, to a large extent, on the way government raises revenues and allocates money to meet various competing and sometimes conflicting needs.