Abstract

The excess of actual imprest expenditures over the overhead cost budgets of Cross River State Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies has not been given the attention it deserves despite the high frequency of its occurrence. More emphasis seems to be placed on the effects of the overall government budget on the actual general expenditure at the neglect of the effects which overhead cost budgets of MDAs have on imprest expenditures in the State. This study was therefore, carried out to fill this gap. Primary and secondary data were collected using questionnaires and office records respectively. Five hypotheses were formulated and tested by specifically applying inferential and parametric statistics to the primary data. The secondary data were specifically used to provide evidence for the identified research problem. The study revealed that overhead cost budgets, special imprests and additional imprests were ineffectively used. Secondly, even though previous studies showed that financial malpractices and poor budget monitoring were strongly associated with extra-budgetary expenditures in the 3 tiers of governments in Nigeria, the current study indicated that these two variables have little or no association and weak association respectively with extra-budgetary imprest expenditures in Cross River State MDAs. Inaccuracies in the overhead cost budgeting system were strongly associated with the extra-budgetary imprest expenditures. The study therefore, recommended that efficient and effective overhead cost budgeting system and regular budget review be put in place.

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