Mali’s annual budget is input based. In recent years it has often been revised in-year to reduce expenditure because receipts have been overestimated. It has recently been underpinned on the expenditure side by a medium term expenditure framework (MTEF) projecting expenditures by spending ministry and agency and by broad programme over three years. The MTEF is subsumed within Mali’s PRSP. Budget preparation begins with a circular to ministries outlining the government’s principal policy options on the basis of which bids are sought. The recurrent and capital budgets are processed separately – respectively by the budget directorate and the planning directorate in the Ministry of Finance and Economy.