Most of the state development programs, including the maintenance of the state apparatus itself, are implemented with the support of budget revenues. In the most general form, budget allocations are such funds that are certified by the signature of their manager and are intended to provide material, technical and financial support to budget organizations and projects. These resources can also be used to make various kinds of payments to the population, when it comes to the state budget and state budget organizations and programs. Among the most important areas to which budget allocations are directed are:
- transfer of financial resources from one level of power to another, to ensure the functioning of institutions of power;
- compensation costs in the implementation of social programs;
- expenses aimed at ensuring the activities and development of the armed forces, the purchase of weapons, equipment;
- ensuring the activities of state institutions financed directly from the budget (law enforcement and law enforcement systems, educational and healthcare institutions, targeted social programs, etc.);
- replenishment and renewal of resources credited to the state reserve. Based on its functions performed in society, budgetary allocations can significantly affect the state of the economy, its sectoral structure, form adequate proportions of the distribution and redistribution of resources between the regions of the country with the aim of more efficient and equivalent development. As a rule, the main consumers of these appropriations are enterprises, institutions and organizations that are owned by the state and do not have stable and necessary sources of funding. These resources are addressed to those entities (legal entities that are not state property), but which are involved in the decision of state programs.
The appropriation of budgetary institutions is carried out in accordance with the administrative subordination of the object of financing to a particular authority, which are responsible for the correct allocation of budgetary resources and their intended use. So, Art. 289 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, considers the misuse of budget funds as such an offense, which consists in sending them to solve those economic or other problems that are not included in the legislatively approved budget plan for any period of time. These include those resources that:
- not confirmed by the budget list of the manager established by law;
- have no notice of their inclusion in the budget appropriations;
- are not included, and are not confirmed by the corresponding estimate of income and expenses, for this particular budget program or project;
- do not have other legal grounds for receiving.
Without exception, all budgetary appropriations allocated by budgets of all levels have exclusively targeted character. Therefore, even with the complexity of the qualification procedure for the use of budgetary funds, all actions that include budgetary obligations should be based only on the law.
According to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, a budgetary obligation means the obligation of the relevant executive or administrative body to spend budgetary resources strictly in accordance with the norms of budgetary legislation. In this sense, this obligation is considered as an integral part of a broader concept - an expenditure obligation, but which does not contain precise indications of the timing and amount of payment.